‘My parents entrusted me to the Cistercian Lay Brothers because they wanted the best for me and couldn’t provide it themselves. I frequently secretly cursed them because they did not prepare me for what the best would be…’
As a ten-year-old, Josef Haslinger became a pupil at the boys’ choir school in Zwettl. He was religious, in fact, he was even convinced that he wanted to become a priest. He loved church. His love was answered by the brothers. First by one, then by others. At the end of February 2019, Haslinger appeared before the office of the ombudsman of the archdiocese in Vienna for victims of violence and sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. He had to narrate what happened to him three times over to variously constituted committees until a clerk finally asked him to write it down himself.
