In Germany, one of the oldest boys' choirs in the world will welcome girls from 2022

More than a thousand years after its birth, the institution where the boys of the famous Bavarian choir of Regensburg are trained is entering a new era with the planned creation of a choir made up of girls, she announced on Tuesday. The school where the “

”, literally the Sparrows of Regensburg Cathedral,

are educated

, will open its doors for the first time to girls at the start of the 2022/2023 school year. “

”said choir director Christian Heiss and school principal Christine Lohse. “

“, Said Christine Lohse, who in 2019 became the first woman to lead this school, during a videoconference.

This does not mean, however, that the famous Catholic boys' choir will become mixed.

"

", clarified Christian Heiss.

The girls will form a choir apart, they will

", he said. The girls' group will also have to wait to be formed before eventually getting its own name, officials said. The boys' choir, which also performs outside of Germany and enjoys international fame, is considered the oldest in the world. It is made up of young people aged 10 to 19. Its origins date back to 975, when Wolfgang of Regensburg, bishop of the city, decided to create a school attached to the cathedral where the boys would have the task of singing at services.

The choir found itself in the heat of the news in 2017, after the publication of an investigation report showing that at least 547 children were victims of abuse, including rape, between 1945 and the early years. 1990. Several senior Church officials have been suspected of not having done enough to prevent these abuses, including the brother of former Pope Benedict XVI, Georg Ratzinger, who led the choir from 1964 to 1994. These revelations stand out. are added to many pedophile scandals unveiled from 2010 in the Catholic Church in Germany, but also in the rest of the world, which have caused a deep crisis within the religious institution.