Germany’s top educator criticizes church over growing abuse scandal

German schools angry over church abuse scandal

MUNICH — German educators sharply criticized Catholic church officials for their handling of a spiraling child abuse scandal even as more alledged victims came forward Thursday, including a former member of the all-boys choir led by the pope’s brother.

The uproar came a day before Germany’s highest bishop was to meet Pope Benedict XVI in Rome.

Germany’s top education representative, Ludwig Spaenle, blasted the church for failing to report cases of physical and sexual abuse in a timely fashion.

“Internal church guidelines as well as school authority directives to report criminal offenses instantly have been circumvented,” Spaenle, who is president of Germany’s 16 education ministers, was quoted as saying by the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper. Church officials need to put “everything on the table.”

Spaenle and his colleagues set up a task force to come up with a new strategy against sexual abuse in schools.

“For us there is ‘zero tolerance’ for the perpetrators,” he said in a statement Thursday.

At least 170 former students from Catholic schools in Germany have come forward with claims of sexual abuse recently and others have spoken of physical abuse.

Wolfgang Blaschka, a 52-year-old graphic designer, told The Associated Press that corporate punishment was the rule, not the exception, when he was a student at the Etterzhausen school just outside Regensburg.

“It was a climate of terror and oppression,” he told the AP, saying one principal grabbed him by the hair and “lifted me into the air.”

Blaschka spent two years at the school before joining the prestigious Regensburger Domspatzen Choir in 1968, which was led by the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, the pope’s brother, from 1964-1994.

“The misery was right in front of his door. He must have known,” said Blaschka, who added that Ratzinger himself hit him.

“I myself have been slapped in the face by him,” he said. “He wasn’t a sadist, but he was obsessed with music.”

The scandal has clearly shaken the Vatican. On Friday, Pope Benedict XVI meets with Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference, just weeks after he summoned Irish bishops to Rome to hear about the Irish abuse cases. The pope has not commented personally on the German scandal.

On Wednesday, the Vatican’s U.N. envoy dedicated his entire speech to a U.N. meeting on children’s rights to the matter of sexual abuse of minors. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi insisted that protecting the young was “high on the agenda” of all church institutions, as was providing assistance to victims.

But he seemed to imply the church was not entirely at fault, saying what was needed to prevent more abuse was a “culture of respect of the human rights and human dignity of every child” — and improved screening for caregivers and teachers.

Petra Dorsch-Jungsberger, a former Munich communications professor who specializes in church matters, said everyone in Germany was waiting for the pope come forward and offer guidance. She said Benedict might be facing the greatest moral issue for the Roman Catholic Church since World War II.

“He is standing with his back against the wall,” Dorsch-Jungsberger told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The Roman Catholic Church has been hit by years of sexual abuse claims in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia and other countries. Yet the German abuse allegations are particularly sensitive because Germany is the pope’s homeland and because some of the scandals involve the choir that the pope’s brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, led for 30 years.

Dorsch-Jungsberger said it’s likely that more details will emerge about the abuse cases in Germany.

“This issue is not at its end by a long shot,” she said. “We can expect a few surprises.”

Schmitt-Roschmann reported from Berlin and Associated Press Writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.