POPE BENEDICT has been linked for the first time to Germany’s growing clerical abuse scandal in a case dating back to his time as archbishop of Munich.
In 1980 the then Archbishop Ratzinger accepted into his diocese a priest convicted of sexual abuse of a minor in the western city of Essen.
A spokesman for the diocese of Munich and Freising admitted yesterday that the transfer was a “mistake” and confirmed that Archbishop Ratzinger was involved in the 1980 decision to accept the priest.
He said it was unlikely that Archbishop Ratzinger knew of the priest’s history in Essen or was aware of the priest’s later conviction, four years after he moved to the Vatican.
In 1986 the priest was convicted for the sexual abuse of minors, this time in Bavaria, fined DM4,000 and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitungnewspaper, the priest is still active in a parish in Upper Bavaria.
In January 1980 the priest was sent to Munich for therapy after a conviction for forcing an 11-year-old in Essen to perform oral sex on him. Rather than enter therapy, however, the priest was put to work in a parish in Grafing, near Munich.
“Returning the man to pastoral work was a big mistake,” said Gerhard Gruber, the former diocesan vicar-general, in a statement.
“I accept the full responsibility. I regret deeply that this decision resulted in this abuse with youths and I apologise to all those who have suffered.”
The snowballing child abuse scandal moved beyond Catholic institutions yesterday with claims of a 30-year period of abuse in Germany’s most prestigous progressive school.
Some 33 former pupils have claimed they were abused at the Odenwald School near Frankfurt. For a century the school has been a leading light of Germany’s anti-authoritarian reform movement that gives pupils influence over syllabus and school structure.
Investigators suspect that eight teachers, including a former principal, used this reform concept as a cover to abuse at least 100 students. The current principal has “accepted as fact” that students were “used as sexual service providers” and that the school ignored complaints.
Meanwhile the Vienna Boys’ Choir has been hit by allegations of “daily humiliations” at the hands of choirmasters and older singers.
“On tours, it was usual that older boys had their pick of the younger members as roommates,” said one former choirboy yesterday.