- Revelations that the Vatican encouraged the castration
of choir boys in the name of art for hundreds of years have prompted calls
for a papal apology.
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- Human rights groups, historians and Italian commentators
said the Pope, a singer himself, should ask forgiveness for his predecessors'
role in the mutilation of castrati singers.
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- New research suggests that the employment of castrati
was tolerated by the Vatican as late as 1959, long after other states had
banned it as barbaric.
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- From the 16th century onwards generations of Italian
boys were castrated in the hope that their voices, prevented from breaking,
would combine a child's high register with the vocal power of a man.
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- Their ability to sing beyond normal human limits enraptured
opera-goers, emperors and popes, who commissioned a choir of castrati to
perform in the Sistine chapel. An edict by St Paul prevented women singing
in church.
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- Successful castrati such as Farinelli - the subject of
Gérard Corbiau's 1994 film - became Europe-wide superstars, feted
by composers such as Handel, but most failed to make the grade and were
cast aside, devastated and useless even as circus freaks.
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- According to Angels Against their Will, a new book by
the German historian Hubert Ortkemper, the castrato Alessandro Moreschi
performed in the Sistine chapel until 1913. Other historians suspect that
Domenico Mancini, another private pontifical singer who performed from
1939 to 1959, was a castrato, too.
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- Officially the Vatican always condemned the practice,
which is thought to have started around 1500, and punished castrators with
excommunication. In 1902 it issued a decree banning castrati from the Sistine
chapel.
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- But such was the beauty and power of their singing that
successive popes sponsored the phenomenon by employing them on the pretext
that they were accidentally castrated, for example by falling from a horse
or by an animal bite.
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- Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, said
the Pope, whose CD recordings have sold millions, should follow up his
admission of church wrongs against Jews, Muslims and scientists by expressing
sorrow for the castrati.
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- "Despite the willingness to address just about any
issue, the current pope has yet to confront an unresolved problem of musical
history. Why doesn't he suggest prayers and remorse for the church's past
connivance with the practice of castrating males?"
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- Human rights activists and academics endorsed the call.
Amnesty International said the value of recognising past wrongs in an apology
should not be underestimated.
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- "Many of those afflicted by ongoing human rights
abuses - including genital mutilations of women and rape as torture - desperately
desire official recognition of the terrible wrongs done to them. An apology
from those involved may be the hardest thing of all to achieve, and the
most valued."
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- Nicholas Davidson, an Oxford University expert on papal
history, said: "If the Pope was going to be consistent, and if there
was evidence that church officials operated in an improper way, then an
apology should be made."
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- The promise of a lucrative career persuaded many poor
Italian parents to castrate sons with musical talent, despite the fact
that the operation often produced gigantism and obese bottoms and legs.
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- No records were kept, but historians believe many operations
to remove testicles - achieved by slitting the groin and severing the spermatic
chord - were botched, leaving boys in agony and in danger of infection.
The lucky ones survived and were good enough for years of intensive training
and cossetting at musical academies.
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- Pope Sisto V, aware that the public craved the "voice
of angels", sanctioned their presence in the Vatican by a papal bull
in 1589.
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- Audiences fainted and wept during performances and groupies
wore medallions of their favourites, but in the 18th century the practice
was gradually acknowledged to be grotesque.
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,536420,00.html
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