Word: timing
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...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...
...TIME's Pictures of the Week...
...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...
...German Catholic reform organization We Are Church, says the group's sex-abuse hotline has received an average of six calls a day from alleged victims in recent weeks and that 18 of Germany's 27 dioceses have been touched by the scandal. "Abuse is widespread," Weisner tells TIME. "The church is investigating the cases very reluctantly. [But] it has a duty to uphold moral standards. Catholics in Germany are extremely disappointed and angry...
...pace and scale of the protests have escalated. Polls also indicate that popular support for the government's handling of the crisis is slipping - a recent survey by the Sunday edition of To Vima, an Athens newspaper, for instance, showed that most Greeks think it will take a long time for the country to pull itself out of its economic mess. More than 37% thought the recession would last three to four years, while 22% said it might last as long as a decade...