“I was so tiny and he was so powerful,” remembers a former student at the St. Michael Catholic study seminar in Traunstein. “This experience destroyed the Catholic world that was supposed to be my home,” says ex-seminarian Johannes Koch.
A study has brought to light incidents of violence in the St. Michael Catholic study seminar in Traunstein. It's about abuse, threats, humiliation, slaps, headbutts - and being forced to eat your own vomit. All of this in the place where Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, was once a seminarian.
The study covers the period between 1960 and 1990. According to project manager and author Judith Dubiski from the leading Institute for Social Work and Social Education in Frankfurt/Main, various forms of violence against underage students occurred during these years.
According to the information, psychological and physical violence was reported most frequently, which was not in line with the Christian standards of the institution: “The hand that hits is the hand that gives the blessing at mass,” is how Dubiski summarizes it.
The scientists see a “lack of preparation and support of the staff” and excessive demands, which were often the cause of the violence. There are also indications of spiritual abuse and abuse of power - and also of some cases of sexual abuse by adults against minors as well as sexual violence between seminarians of the same age.
However, no case has been reported "where a seminarian had to experience sexual abuse over a longer period of time," said Dubiski.
“Unlike psychological and physical violence, sexualized violence was not used as a sanction, but was disguised as a “benefit,” say the authors of the study, which was initiated by affected former seminarians and financed by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. The current school management also expressly supports the reappraisal.
“With the study we make the suffering visible, we recognize it,” said seminar leader Wolfgang Dinglreiter. He also emphasized: “The seminar is currently a completely different boarding school.”
The boarding school in Upper Bavaria, founded in 1929, has its reputation as a Catholic training ground primarily because Joseph Ratzinger, the future German Pope Benedict XVI, was once a seminarian there. In the 1930s and 1940s - before the period examined in the study - he lived there while attending high school and remained very attached to the house later on.
In 2020, current study initiator Koch made allegations of abuse public in an interview. When presenting the study, he spoke about how a Franciscan monk he met through the study seminar abused him. “He was friendly and approachable,” said Koch. “Sexualized violence is discreet and can be easily hidden, especially in an environment in which sexuality is taboo.”
After Koch made his experiences public, other suspected victims came forward. The scientists researched for 18 months, viewed files and conducted interviews with those affected. The scientists see no evidence of systematic and structural abuse in the case of St. Michael, as has been shown in similar studies.
The Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, Christoph Klingan, was affected by the results of the study. “I was very moved by reading it,” he said. In the study seminar there was “a lot of light, but also a lot of shadow”. He wanted to “apologize for what you, those present today, but also others, suffered here at the hands of church employees.”
