Defending itself against a growing child sex abuse scandal in Europe, one that has even come close to the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican said Tuesday that local European churches had “acted swiftly and decisively” to address the issue. In a note read on Vatican Radio, the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, also cautioned against limiting the concerns over child sex abuse to Catholic institutions, noting that it also affected the broader society.
The comment comes amid a wave of church sex abuse scandals to emerge in recent weeks in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, adding to the fallout from a broad abuse investigation in Ireland.
In his note, Father Lombardi said that local churches had demonstrated “a will for transparency, in a certain sense accelerating how the problem had been brought to light, inviting victims to come forward, even regarding cases from a long time ago,” he said.
He noted that in Austria, 17 abuse cases were found in Catholic institutions, while in the same period 510 abuse cases were found “in other environments.” “That should also concern us,” he said.
The newly emerging scandals, particularly those in Germany, cut particularly close to Benedict, who was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, before spending more than two decades as the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is ultimately responsible for investigating abuse cases.
Benedict’s moral standing in Germany had already been diminished in some eyes by his outreach to a schismatic bishop, who, it emerged, had denied the scope of the Holocaust.
The connection to Benedict’s brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, comes from accusations of physical and sexual abuse from former students at two Bavarian boarding schools connected to a choir he directed from 1964 to 1994, leading to questions about whether he could have known about the abuse.
According to a statement by the diocese in Regensburg, one former student said he was “abused through excessive beatings and humiliations, and molested through touching in the genital area” during a period described as “the early 1960s.”
And the German magazine Spiegel reported this week on accusations involving one of the schools, quoting a former student, Franz Wittenbrink, as saying the Etterzhausen boarding school had an “elaborate system of sadistic punishments combined with sexual lust,” and that a priest masturbated with pupils in his apartment.
“I find it inexplicable that the pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, who had been cathedral choirmaster since 1964, apparently knew nothing about it,” Mr. Wittenbrink told the magazine, adding that a fellow student had committed suicide shortly before graduation.
Monsignor Ratzinger, 86, said in an interview this week with a Bavarian daily that the sexual accusations refer to a period before his tenure. But he apologized for slapping students before corporal punishment was outlawed in Bavaria in 1980.
“In the beginning I also slapped people in the face, but I always had a bad conscience about it,” he told the daily, Passauer Neue Presse, adding that if he had known about excessive corporal punishment, “I would have said something.”
“The problem of sexual abuse was never raised,” Monsignor Ratzinger said. “I believe it wasn’t just the church that remained silent. It was also clearly the society.”
In Germany, new cases continue to come to light in the wake of abuse accusations made public in January involving students at the prestigious Canisius Jesuit high school in Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s.
In Austria, Bruno Becker, the head of a Salzburg monastery, resigned Monday after admitting that while studying to be a priest he had sexually abused a boy more than 40 years ago.
Last week, the Catholic hierarchy in the Netherlands announced it would open an investigation after former pupils at a monastery school told the Dutch media about systematic sex abuse in the 1960s.
In December, several Irish bishops resigned after a report by the Irish government detailed the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children by Catholic priests in church-run residential schools.
In his note on Tuesday, Father Lombardi said that the church had made a good start in addressing the “very serious issue” of sexual abuse of minors, investigating the accusations and showing concern for the victims.
He added that “errors committed by institutions and members of the church are particularly reprehensible given the church’s educational and moral responsibility.”
Father Lombardi noted that Benedict had “shown his participation” in tackling the issue by meeting with Irish bishops at the Vatican last month and was preparing an open letter to Irish bishops on the abuse scandal.
Vatican sources said the letter could appear as soon as next week.
On Friday, the pope is expected to meet at the Vatican with Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference. A spokesman for the archbishop said that the abuse cases would be on the agenda.
Father Lombardi also defended the church’s “distinct” internal procedures for handling abuse cases, noting that Canon Law did not impose fines or detention but “prohibits the exercise of ministry” and allows for the “loss of ecclesiastical rights.”
Under Canon Law, he said, child sex abuse “has always been considered one of the most serious of acts.”
A day earlier, Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, criticized the church over mounting a “wall of silence” in abuse cases for proceeding with internal investigations before involving law enforcement.
In an interview, she said prosecutors should be brought in as soon as possible.”
There is also discussion over whether to extend the statute of limitations in molestation cases, which currently expires 10 years after the accuser turns 18.
The Archbishop of Bamberg, Ludwig Schick, came out Tuesday in favor of prolonging the statute of limitations to at least 30 years.
Kristina Schröder, Germany’s federal family minister, has called for a roundtable discussion next month, which the German bishops’ conference plans to participate in.
In his note, Father Lombardi said the church was “naturally ready” to join the roundtable.
“Probably its painful experience could be a useful contribution for others,” he said.
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