Vatican fights to distance Pope from child sex scandals

The Vatican fought attempts to link Pope Benedict XVI to child sex abuse in a counteroffensive yesterday against widening paedophilia scandals.

"It is clearly evident that in the past few days there are some who have sought - with a dogged focus on Regensburg and Munich - elements to personally implicate the Holy Father in questions of abuse," spokesman Federico Lombardi said.

"It is clear that these efforts have failed," he said on Radio Vatican.

Last Friday, the pope's former diocese of Munich confirmed a report that, as an archbishop in 1980, the pontiff approved housing for a priest, who was accused of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex.

Six years later, the priest was given a suspended prison sentence for child sex offences. The archdiocese said he still works in Bavaria, with no known repeat violations.

The disclosure added to a growing scandal in Germany that had already come close to Pope Benedict's brother Georg Ratzinger, a former choirmaster.

The first revelations emerged in January when an elite Jesuit school in Berlin admitted systematic sexual abuse of pupils by two priests in the 1970s and 1980s.

Among other boarding schools implicated is one attached to the Domspatzen (Cathedral Sparrows), Regensburg cathedral's 1,000-year-old choir which was run for 30 years by the pope's older brother.

Ratzinger, 86, said last Tuesday that the alleged sexual abuse in the 1950s and 1960s - before his time - was "never discussed".

However, in the latest revelations, a former choirboy Thomas Mayer told German magazine Der Spiegel that he had been raped by older members of the choir and that Ratzinger had violent fits of outrage during rehearsals.

"Ratzinger, I saw him extremely angry and irascible during rehearsals," Mayer said. "Several times I saw him throw a chair at the male voices, which I was part of." Once he was so angry that he spat his dentures out. Ratzinger recently acknowledged he had "given slaps" at the beginning of his tenure and that he had always had a "bad conscience" about it and felt "relieved" when a law banning corporal punishment was made in the early 1980s.

A proliferation of abuse scandals across Europe has prompted deep soul-searching among church leaders, not least in Germany where 19 of the 27 dioceses have been implicated in allegations.

Vatican spokesman Lombardi said yesterday that the pope "encouraged" "recognising the truth and helping victims" in cases of abuse, adding that the line of the Church was not "to cover up these offences but... to judge and adequately punish" offenders.

Most of the priests concerned are not expected to face criminal charges because the alleged crimes took place too long ago. But there have been growing calls for a change in the law and for the church to pay compensation. A senior Vatican official sought to downplay the child sex abuse scandals in an interview with a newspaper.