VATICAN CITY - A GERMAN bishop gave new details of a sex-abuse scandal at a famous boys' choir in southern Germany once headed by Pope Benedict XVI's brother, in remarks published on Saturday.
Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, bishop of Regensburg, where the Domspatzen (Cathedral Sparrows) choir is based, also confirmed previous reports that Pope Benedict's 86-year-old brother did not head the choir at the time.
The two 'remembered' cases of sex abuse at Domspatzen dated back to 1958 and therefore 'did not coincide with the period where professor Georg Ratzinger was in charge', Bishop Mueller said in a statement published in the Vatican's official Osservatore Romano newspaper. Professor Ratzinger headed the choir between 1964 and 1994, he said.
The director and composer Franz Wittenbrink, a former pupil of the boarding school attached to Domspatzen, spoke of an 'ingenious system of sadistic punishments connected to sexual pleasure' at the school.
In comments to be published in Monday's edition of Der Spiegel news weekly, he accused a former head of the school of 'taking two or three boys into his room in the evenings,' giving them wine and masturbating with them.
Mr Wittenbrink told the magazine it was well known what went on at the school, and he 'could not understand how the pope's brother Georg Ratzinger, who was master of the chapel from 1964, could not have been aware.' -- AFP
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