An internal report on sexual abuse at a Catholic monastery in Germany is causing more trouble for the Catholic Church.
Thomas Pfister, a lawyer hired to investigate accusations of abuse at the monastery in Pope Benedict's native Bavaria, concluded that children at the monastery's school allegedly were "sadistically tormented and also sexually abused." Pfister issued his final report to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.
"My investigations quite clearly show that for decades up until around 1990, children and adolescents were brutally abused in the Ettal monastery," Pfister said in a written statement, Reuters reported.
An archdiocese spokesman said he could not comment on the specific number of victims, Reuters reported.
Also Friday, the Vatican said that Pope Benedict XVI would meet with more abuse victims and that transparency in dealing with abuse allegations is an "urgent requirement" for the church -- a sharp turnabout in Rome's previously defensive response to the scandal.
The church's internal justice system for dealing with abuse allegations has come under attack because of claims by victims that their accusations were long ignored by bishops more concerned about protecting the church and by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1981 until he was elected pope in 2005.
Germany's has recently been hit hard by a Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, which has grown from the claims of seven former pupils at a Catholic-run Berlin high school to more than 170 ex-students from several of the church's most prominent educational facilities in Germany.
