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Left, cover photo of Mons. Rathzigner's book shows Benedict XVI greeting him after a concert given by the Regensburger Domspatzen at the Sistine chapel; center, 'family photo' of Benedict XVI with his brother and his Mater Ecclesiae household taken in 2016;
and right, with Michael Hesemann.
Laying to rest the stories wrongly linking
Georg Ratzinger to 'sex abuse' reports
I personally do not see anything other than an unfortunate coincidence in the fact that the report on the abuses claimed to have been inflicted on pupils of the schools attended by members of the Regensburg Cathedral's Boys Choir (the Regensburger DomSpatzen) was released shortly after Cardinal Mueller's dismissal on June 30 and Benedict XVI's funeral eulogy for Cardinal Meisner on July 5. After all, the report was commissioned by the Diocese of Regensburg, and I do not see Bishop Voderholzer deliberately 'timing' the report release at an 'inauspicious' time. (Voderholzer is a longtime associate of Cardinal Mueller who also was the executive director of the Institut Papst Benedikt XVI, which has been publishing the COMPLETE WRITINGS OF JOSEPH RATZINGER, among its many activities, before Benedict XVI named him Bishop of Regensburg when Mueller went to the CDF.)
Nevertheless, it is necessary for readers of the 'news', such as it is, to know the context and background to news reports last week in order to place it in the right perspective, especially vis-à-vis the implied involvement of Mons. Georg Ratzinger in the abuses, and secondarily, with the aspersions that Cardinal Mueller did not do enough about the abuses once it came to his knowledge.
Claims about abuses reportedly committed against some members of the Regensburg Boys' Choir while they were schoolchildren first came out in 2010, but the new report disclosed earlier this week covers a much longer time period (1945-1992) and is the result of a thorough investigation first ordered by the Diocese of Regensburg, then under Bishop Mueller, in 2010. Mons. Georg Ratzinger had obviously nothing to do with the couple of abuse claims initially verified in 2010 because they took place before he was hired by the Diocese in 1964.
That did not, however, stop the media at the time from immediately tacking his name onto the headlines to give the impression that he was involved because he happened to be the Choir's Musical Director from 1964 to 1994 when he retired. Which is exactly what happened again this time, with the release of the complete report commissioned by the Diocese itself, because the new report covers the period from 1945-1992, a 47-year period that includes the first 28 years of Mons. Ratzinger's employment at the Regensburg Cathedral. [Some news reports last week claimed the investigation covered the years 1945-2015, and that this new report is based on an investigation begun in 2015 after the initial investigations ordered by the diocese in 2010 were criticized. In which case, if the period investigated was between 1945 to 2015, it is a 70-year timespan, during which the investigation found that 547 former pupils had probably been victims of physical and/or sexual violence. Of those, 67 suffered sexual abuse. He blamed 49 individuals, 45 of whom were physically violent and nine of whom were believed to have committed sexual violence.
(In which case, my earlier calculations of how the abuses averaged to becomes even lower since the figures would be averaged over 70 years instead of just 47 years, and it would come to 7.8 total abuses and 0.96 sexual abuses per year. Again, a single case of abuse is bad enough, and I do not in any way seek to minimize the gravity of the offenses, but one must also keep a proper perspective on the probable and plausible prevalence of abuses claimed. Perhaps the full report has a breakdown of the abuses reported by year, which would give us an idea at which time the abuses were particularly prevalent, and to know whether any sexual abuses were reported after 2001 when the Vatican took charge of the Church program to minimize if not eliminate the occurrence of sexual predation on minors by priests.]
The Regensburger Domspatzen story first broke on March 5, 2010 – at the height, as I have pointed out, of the concerted and determined effort by three of the world's media colossi – the Associated Press, the New York Times and Der Spiegel – to find out anything that could possibly show Joseph Ratzinger was directly or indirectly involved in a case of sexual abuse, or failing that, in covering up or playing blind to priests who did.
Their end game at the time was to force him to resign the Papacy – and as we all know, he did not flee these wolves, who, in effect, put much time and resources on a witch hunt or wild goose chase, take your pick. Which is why, IMHO, at the time Benedict actually did resign the papacy, none of these three giants even dared come up with a hypothetical 'scandal' – other than the picayune Vatileaks – to explain the 265th Pope's historic action beyond the plain and simple explanation he gave of ingravescentem aetatem and the increasing infirmities that come with advanced age.
Anyway, two brief news items from March 6, 2010 – the day after the Domspatzen story first broke – constitute a necessary background and context for what was greeted a few days ago as 'MAJOR SCANDAL – HUNDREDS OF BOYS RAPED IN GEORG RATZINGER'S SCHOOL' – with headlines that were deliberately and maliciously misleading, since, of course, the media jumps at any chance to put 'RATZINGER' and 'SEXUAL ABUSE' together in a negative headline! (On the other hand, they simply dismissed as 'routine news' any and all of Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's initiatory, decisive and continuing efforts to combat what he called 'filth' in the Church – it was never the stuff of their headlines, because how could the BIG BAD ROTTWEILER do anything good at all?]
From the 3/7/10 issue of L'Osservatore Romano:
Maximum transparency on
sex abuse cases in Germany
L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO
REGENSBURG, March 6, 2010 - The diocese of Regensburg will examine the accusations of sexual abuses alleged to have happened against members of the Regensburger boys' choir "with the maximum transparency".
This was stated by the diocesan spokesman Clemens Neck, who announced the formation of an ad hoc investigative commission to show that it is not afraid to seek the facts even on recent charges made about which there is still little concrete information.
Meanwhile, the diocese has apologized in an open letter to the families of the victims. The bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, recalled the case of an ex-director of the choirboys' boarding school who was convicted in 1971 for sexual abuse for an incident that apparently took place in 1969, 10 years after he left the boarding school. He served two years in prison, and has since died.
Mueller called on anyone who has knowledge of reported sexual abuses in the Domspatzen institutions to provide information in order to identify the offenders and the victims. Further information about the Domspatzen institutions are published in a separate article [see below].
The recent plenary assembly of the German bishops' conference discussed the cases of sexual abuses by priests that have been uncovered lately. The various dioceses in which cases have been revealed are working to set things right with maxium transparency and determination.
The leadership of the Domspatzen institutions expressed their consternation for the cases that have been reported so far, including those that are linked to the Domspatzen in some way…
[P.S. 2017 Very importantly, Bishop Mueller's 2010 statement also made clear the relationship between the schools where the abuses were said to have taken place and the choir itself which is attached to the Cathedral of Regensburg. But this distinction has never appeared in any of the media reports about the abuses then or now.]
STATEMENT FROM
BISHOP OF REGENSBURG
March 6, 2010
The Bishop of Regensburg, Mons. Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, has issued the following statement on the Regensburger Domspatzen:
The Regensburger Domspatzen have three components:
- The Gymnasium (high school), which is headed by a lay director
- The Boarding School (Internat), headed by a priest assisted by educators and pedagogues
- The Choir, directed by the Master of the Cathedral Chapel (Domkapellmeister).
The elementary school once in Etterzhausen, now in Pielhofen, is an institution that is independent of the Domspatzen. There is collaboration only on some specific areas in musical education. That is why it is called the Vorschule, the school preliminary to the Domspatzen.
In recent days, we recalled two cases of sexual abuse:
- The first case dates to 1958, and the offender was the vice-director of the preparatory school. When the offense was discovered. he was dismissed and subsequently tried and convicted to a jail term.
- The second case had to do with a person who in 1959 worked for seven months with the Domspatzen. Twelve years after he left the school, he was convicted and jailed for a case of sexual abuse. We are now investigating if there were any such incidents during his seven months with the Domspatzen.
Both cases were of public knowledge at the time they happened and are considered closed in juridical terms.
They do not coincide with the period of service by Prof. Georg Ratzinger (1964-1994).
In the canonical sense, it is the Bishop of Regensburg who has the responsibility for the church institutions in the diocese of Regensburg.
But once again, the lack of any substance to the insinuations made in the NEW headlines about Regensburg is probably the reason why after the initial flurry of headlines, there appear to be no new links indicating continuing media interest in the 'scandal', at least not in Catholic news aggregations, or even in a random survey of the major news agencies.
Two items deserve to be read which appeared immediately on the heels of the new Regensburg Choirboys' story. The first, is a review of the Weber report by Alberto, a German-speaking follower of Lella's blog, who noted that as far as it concerns Georg Ratzinger, the report simply confirms what the Emeritus Pope's brother had said in 2010, and obviously the report itself came up with nothing new or damaging against him, even if the lawyer who presented the report commented at his news conference that "Georg Ratzinger should have done something about it"! What could he have done about something he knew nothing about? Reuter's reported Weber's comments this way:
Weber said he [Georg Ratzinger] was “to be blamed especially for turning a blind eye and not intervening despite having knowledge”, adding the investigation did not show he was aware of sexual abuse. Several testimonies said he was generally friendly.
Georg Ratzinger, 93, brother of the former pope Benedict XVI, led the choir from 1964 to 1994. He acknowledged in 2010 that he had slapped pupils in the facebut said he had not realised how brutal the discipline was.
Alberto's conclusions are as follows [my translation]:
Thanks to
IL BLOG DI RAFFAELLA
Mons. Ratzinger's position [as innocent and uninvolved in any way in the abuses claimed] is reinforced by the report considering that:
- The lawyer Weber who presented the report had been chosen specifically by the Diocese of Regensburg to conduct the investigation ordered
In 2010 because he represents Wasser Ring, an association founded to assist victims of abuse, which therefore gave the diocese a guarantee of maximum transparency and free of the suspicison that the investigators would somehow be in collusion with the diocese.
- Weber reached out to all possible abuse victims and heard their testimony but he never once contacted Mons. Ratzinger [perhaps because there was no reason to do so, judging from the testimonies he took].
- Weber's investigation was not one that required the victims to confront their abusers [if only because almost all the accused abusers are dead]. Rather, it was a historical inquiry which did not claim to be able to arrive at the full truth but, as Weber himself said at his news conference, was limited to determine the plausibility of the accusers' accounts in view of possible damages that the diocese is prepared to pay the victims.
Therefore, if that was the desired objective, and appropriate weight was given to the version of the former students about the abuses they suffered, it can be considered highly plausible – to paraphrase Weber's own words – that whatever they specifically said did not occur, did in fact not occur.
The Weber report dedicates pp 378-381 to the evidence it heard about Mons. Ratzinger from its witnesses, in which the report states that the violent incidents reported by the alleged victims (480 claimed receiving corporal punishment for corrective purposes, while 67 alleged sexual abuses) took place not during the choir's practice sessions and music lessons with Mons. Ratzinger at the Regensburg Cathedral, but at their boarding school.
The report does not accuse Georg Ratzinger of having been named as responsible for any maltreatment, neither physical nor moral, but at the most, that he may have heard here and there about the excessive use of physical punishment as a corrective measure but of not having intervened at all, except by writing a letter to the school director in 1989 to ask about an incident he was told about. [We must recall that in 2010, in his first reaction to the reports, he volunteered that he himself used to 'box the ear' of a misbehaving choirboy, but stopped doing it when Germany outlawed corporal punishment in schools in 1980, and expressed apologies for his transgressio9ns.]
In 2010, he had said about the abuse claims that now and then, he heard talk about physical abuses, but never sexual, but he had not imagined the degree and extent to which it was practiced.
The most serious accusation raised against him came from a student that Mons. Ratzinger was present at a dinner when the student pocketed some roast pork and was slapped by the school director for it, but Mons. Ratzinger did not intervene.
The report confirms that there is no proof he ever heard of any sexual abuses against the schoolboys and cites the opinions of ex-students who said it was highly improbable that he would have known anything because he was a very reserved person and his interest seemed to be only the musical training and quality of the choir, not in their school life.
None of the media reports mentions the words by some of the complainants who only seemed to have affectionate memories of their choir director:, e.g., "He gave the impression that he was not really aware of what was going on around him outside music. He was a very respected person, like a grandfather who distributed candy to us every week, and whose highest passion was for good music… He knew nothing about our school nort what was happening there" (Lines 24-29, p. 378)).
On pp. 212-218, the report is not concerned with any eventual responsibility he may have had regarding the abuses, but rather his personality as described by 124 of the victims interviewed. [If the investigators specifically asked them about Mons. Ratzinger, even if no one had accused him of being involved, it can only mean that the investigators wanted to make sure they covered all the bases!]
The opinions were varied. Some remember him as being irascible and authoritarian – especially if their performance was not musically perfect – and some of them remember being boxed on the ears as the monsignor himself recalled, but they also said it was not because their choirmaster took pleasure in punishing them, only that he had his moments of temper. Most of the complainants however praised him:
- "He was authoritarian but he never harmed anyone".
- "He was really fair and competent. I remember him with respect."
- "He would scold, but in a friendly way, never vengefully."
- "He was strict, but there is no doubt he had a good heart."
- "I have a great memory of him as a very warm person".
- "Children were attracted to him and approached him without fear. It seemed he was always surrounded by groups of children."
- "Our Domkapellmeister, our leader, was appreciated by all the Choir boys, even when his musical demands were stressful on us".
- "Whenever possible, every afternoon at 4 we would be in front of his house [he lives within walking distance of the Cathedral], and he would give us cake, biscuits and candies."
- "The boys loved him."
A more specific defense of Mons. Ratzinger was made by German Church historian Michael Hesemann, who co-authored the monsignor's 2011 book entitled My Brother the Pope. In a July 21 interview with kath.net, Hesemann points out that none of the media stories say that the Weber report explicitly exonerates Georg Ratzinger from any involvement in the cases uncovered. Instead, most German accounts have indiscriminately conflated the comments of one of the victims who is promoting a book entitled 'Abused by the Church' with statements in the Weber report. I will post Hesemann's interview as soon as translated.
Meanwhile, read Andrea Tornielli's account of the 2010 Regensburg Choirboys story as I posted it at the time…
The good news is that most of the Italian Vaticanistas who reported on "Regensburg #2" in today's printed newspapers punctiliously avoided the prompt manipulation by the online newspapers and news agencies yesterday to link the Ratzinger name in the headlines - however tenuously - to a sexual abuse story. Andrea Tornielli also sets his readers straight on the facts…
A low blow to the Pope
and to his brother
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from
IL GIORNALE
March 6, 2010
A scandal has been uncovered involving the Regensburg boys' choir which was under the musical direction of the Pope's older brother for 30 years.
But to associate the charges of sexual abuse with Georg Ratzinger is sheer bad faith - the incidents revealed so far took place before he even came to Regensburg.
The Church in Germany is in the grip of newly-revealed sexual abuses committed against minors by German priests in the past - and mud has been smeared without basis on the Pope's brother, Mons. Georg Ratzinger, who was choir director of the Regensburger Domspatzen attached to the Cathedral of Regensburg from 1964 to 1994.
Yesterday, in the online editions of many newspapers as well as the news agencies, the Ratzinger name was associated arbitrarily to the reports of abuses said to have been committed against pupils of the choirboys' boarding school - even if there was nothing to connect Mons. Ratzinger to the incidents.
These are the facts: The bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, earlier this week, issued an apology to the victims and their families for some cases [six to date, exactly] of sexual abuse that had taken place in the diocese in the past.
The diocesan website published a report on cases that had been ascertained to have happened [two of the offending priests, now both dead, were in fact sentenced to jail for the offenses] as well as a couple of newly reported cases said to have taken place in the early 1960s but not yet ascertained.
The Domspatzen is first mentioned in the diocesan report because a former rector of its special music high school who served in 1953-1958, was sentenced to jail for having been caught in flagrante with two of his wards.
A second priest was convicted in 1971 to 11 months in prison for sexual abuse committed in 1969. In 1959, this priest had served for eight months as the director of the choirboys' boarding school - five years before Georg Ratzinger came to Regensburg. But the offense for which he served time took place 10 years after he left the boarding school, while he was serving as the diocesan director for sacred music. [The victim's name is so far not known.] Therefore, this second case had nothing to do with the Domspatzen.
Both convicted priests died in 1984, far from Regensburg.
Of the other cases which the diocese is investigating one was a complaint about corporal punishment and sexual abuse, another for corporal punishment (including lashing) - both incidents not in the city of Regensburg.
Bishop Mueller's spokesman made clear that both in the old cases as well as the two newly-reported ones, none took place during the time Mons. Ratzinger led the Domspatzen.
The present music director, Roland Buecher, together with the prefect of studies Bethold Wahl and the director of the boarding school Rainer Schinko, signed a letter which says: "We are consternated that such shameful things have taken place in ecclesiastical institutions. We have just learned that an ex-choirboy has recently complained that he was the victim of sexual abuse in the early 1960s. On the basis of present information, it is not clear whether the abuses took place in our school or in the elementary school of Etterzhausen."
The letter also says: "Through a press clipping from the 1950s, we obtained concrete information about a case of sexual abuse, showing that a former director of the boarding school was convicted for the offense. At this time, we do not have other concrete facts on any other suspected cases of sexual abuse involving the Regensburg boys' choir".
But meanwhile, the name of Georg Ratzinger - who told Bavarian Radio yesterday that he had "no knowledge of any case of sexual abuse" involving the boy' choir - has been associated irresponsibly with this matter.
At the Vatican, the deputy press director said that the Holy See "considers the problem in Germany a serious matter" but it will not intervene directly in the Regensburg cases.
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