Current Tonight | March 12, 2010 | 3 comments

German Clergy Scandal Reaches the Pope's Family

source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1971353,00.html

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CarolineS
Pope Benedict XVI's triumphant return to his Bavarian hometown of Marktl am Inn four years ago — his first since becoming Pontiff — was made all the more poignant by the presence of his older brother, Georg Ratzinger. Five decades after they'd entered seminary together, the new Pontiff and the retired church-choir director stepped with the same soft gait and wavy white hair into the town's tiny riverside chapel. Praying silently side by side, they might just as well have been an aging pair of humble village priests.

But that tender image has been shattered by recent allegations that young singers in the famed Regensburger Domspatzen choir, which the elder Ratzinger directed from 1964 to 1994, have suffered sexual abuse and beatings at the hands of priests since the 1950s. Though the retired Ratzinger, 86, denies any knowledge of sexual abuse during his time with the choir, he has admitted to slapping several singers and apologized for not having intervened to limit the crueler beatings that have been alleged by others.




http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1971353,00.html
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    News and Politics,   Entertainment,   Current Tonight,   World Politics,   1 more
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3 comments // German Clergy Scandal Reaches the Pope's Family

  • ryan8566
    • 0
      ryan8566  

    • "not acceptable"? it is also illegal, a felony, should be tried in a criminal court, and if found guilty, put in jail. "disturbing"? yeah, i guess that's right. they have gone from the U.S. to ireland, germany, the netherlands, italy, and now to, of all places, brasil and south america, it's hope for the future. and the head of this most corrupt institution, what is it...pope?...says "sorry". of all the organised religions today, the roman catholics really suck!

    • 1 year ago
  • PoliticolNews
    • 0
      PoliticolNews  

    • There is a secrecy about the Catholic Church abusing young people that is just not acceptable especially coming from a religious organization that has allowed sexual abuse by priests for decades. This is very disturbing not only to Catholics but to every person who has ever been abused.

    • 1 year ago
  • Nathan_Roche
    • 0
      Nathan_Roche  

    • Since when have the clergy not commited such horrific acts, I admit not all clergymen are power abusing and ill natured, but proportional to the main population they do tend that way.

    • 1 year ago
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