The brother of Pope Benedict has admitted he slapped pupils in the face at a German school where he led the choir, but said he had been unaware of the brutality of the discipline there.

Rev Georg Ratzinger (86) made the comments to a German paper yesterday following charges of sexual and physical abuse in Catholic schools in the Pope's native Bavaria.

“Pupils told me on concert trips about what went on. But it didn't dawn on me from their stories that I should do something. I was not aware of the extent of these brutal methods,” he told the Passauer Neue Presse.

“If I had known about the excess of force... I would have said something. I ask the victims for forgiveness.”

Rev Ratzinger led the “Domspatzen” (Cathedral Sparrows), the official choir for the Regensburg diocese, from 1964 to 1994. “At the start, I also slapped people in the face, but I always had a bad conscience,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has said its involvement in child abuse scandals was only part of a wider problem.

Sexual abuse scandals in Germany, the Pope's homeland, and other countries were cause for anguish but the Church's response has been prompt and transparent, the Vatican said.

A spokesman said any abuse in the Church is “especially deplorable” given its educational and moral responsibilities. But he said the problem was wider than cases that have surfaced in the Church and that focusing on the Church alone would not truly depict the problem.

Scandals over sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and cover-ups by Church hierarchy have exploded in recent months in Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands.

The US Church is still dealing with the financial and emotional fallout from years of scandals.

The latest allegations are particularly sensitive, because Germany is the Pope's homeland and because they involve a choir once led by his brother.

Ratzinger has repeatedly said the allegations date from before his tenure as choir director.

Related story from the Belfast Telegraph:

Pope's brother Georg Ratzinger linked to child abuse claims

By Jerome Taylor
Tuesday, 9 March 2010

The Catholic Church has been plunged into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims.

Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope's older brother, Georg.

Monsignor Ratzinger has agreed to testify in any eventual prosecutions – but says that he knew of no abuse. And last night the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, joined a growing chorus of politicians in Berlin to criticise the church over its attitude to the investigation, accusing Catholic institutions of a policy of secrecy.

"In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence," said Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a prominent critic of the church. She pointed to a Vatican directive from 2001 which required that even the most damaging allegations should be first investigated internally and then reported to the authorities. A church spokesman called her criticisms "absurd".

A separate sex scandal has also enveloped the Catholic Church in the Netherlands after three people said they were abused at a boarding school run by priests in the 1960s. Since the allegations were published on Friday more than 200 people have come forward to a designated helpline claiming that they were also abused by monks and priests.

The new allegations are a source of major embarrassment to the Vatican, which had been hoping to draw a line under child abuse. Over the past decade the issue has enormously damaged the church's reputation and finances.

The allegations in Germany first surfaced last month when investigators began looking into a series of Jesuit schools, but the scandal broadened out over the weekend into the heart of deeply Catholic Bavaria. The allegations coming out of the Regensburg diocese are particularly awkward because the Pope and his brother spent much of their careers in senior positions there, which will inevitably raise questions as to whether they ever encountered or heard about clergy who sexually abused minors.

Throughout the 1970s Joseph Ratzinger taught theology at the University of Regensburg. His older brother Georg took over the Regensburger Domspatzen in 1964 and, over the next 30 years, helped turn the male-only choir into one of the best in the world.

But he says that he never heard of any abuse in his time with the choir. Asked by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica whether he would talk to German officials, the 86-year-old Mgr Ratzinger replied: "Obviously I'd be ready to do so, but I am not able to provide any information on any deed that could be punished, because I don't have any – I never knew anything about it."

Any abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen, he said, occurred before he took over. He did admit that pupils at the school were subjected to a climate of "discipline and rigour" but added that this was necessary in order to reach "a high musical, artistic level".

But Franz Wittenbrink, a German composer who lived at the school until 1967, described the school as being run by "a sophisticated system of sadistic punishments in connection with sexual lust". He was also quoted by Der Spiegel as saying that it was "inexplicable" that the Pope's brother knew nothing of what was happening.

The new sex scandals have emerged just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI gave Ireland's bishops a public dressing down for failing to deal with child abuse which he described as a "heinous crime". He also called on Catholic bishops to tackle allegations with "honesty and courage". But, while the Vatican has given its backing to a full investigation of the allegations, the Pope has so far remained personally silent on the matter.

We Are Church, a prominent Christian support network for abuse victims, has now called on the Pope publicly to declare whether he knew of any abuse allegations when he was a bishop.

"He must answer the question about what he knew and what he did about it," said Christian Weisner, the group's German spokesperson.