Word: sexuality
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...faithful - and much of the ire is focused on the German who is now Supreme Pontiff in Rome. On Monday, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung splashed the headline "Benedict XVI Remains Silent" on a front-page story describing how the Pope declined to comment on the growing priestly sexual-abuse scandal in his native Germany during public prayers in the Vatican on Sunday. "The abuse scandal has been a nightmare," Alois Glück, president of Germany's lay organization, the Central Committee of German Catholics, tells TIME. "It's one of the worst crises that we've seen...
...Catholic Church has been on the defensive in Germany since January, when at least 50 cases of sexual abuse from the 1970s and '80s were reported at the Jesuit high school, Canisius College, in Berlin - with two priests linked as alleged perpetrators. That was the catalyst. Within weeks, dozens of victims came forward with accusations at other Catholic schools and institutions. With up to 200 allegations of abuse, 22 out of Germany's 27 Roman Catholic dioceses have been affected by the scandal. Even the famous choir of Regensburg, in Bavaria, which the Pope's brother Georg Ratzinger...
...Philadelphia district attorney in 1965. He is pro-choice and pro-gay rights. Conservatives have never forgiven him for sinking Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork in 1987; liberals feel the same about his zealous grilling of Anita Hill when her accusations of sexual harassment nearly killed Clarence Thomas' nomination...
...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. (See pictures of the Pope in the Holy Land...
...Others, however, claim Ratzinger must have known more at the time. Franz Wittenbrink, a former singer who lived at the Regensburg boarding school connected with the choir from 1958 to 1967, tells TIME it was "unimaginable" that Ratzinger hadn't heard about cases of sexual abuse during his time as director. Wittenbrink alleges that there was a "widespread system of sadistic punishments and sexual lust" at the school and in the choir. He says he was physically abused by young men in training to become priests at the school who would routinely smack him on the bottom with their hands...