Pope appoints bishop to investigate sex scandal

POPE JOHN PAUL, reacting unusually swiftly to a sex and child pornography scandal that has rocked the Austrian Catholic Church, named a special investigator yesterday to probe the affair.

A brief statement said the Pope had named Bishop Klaus Kung of the Austrian city of Feldkirch to look into the problems of the Austrian diocese of St Poelten and “in particular” a seminary at the centre of the scandal.

Predominantly Catholic Austria has been shocked by its worst clerical scandal in a decade, another blow for the Church, which has been shaken by a series of sexual abuse cases across the world.

Vienna Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn said the Pope had acted quickly and called it an “extraordinary measure.”

News that police had seized seminary computers to check for child pornography broke in May, but the scandal exploded last week when news magazine Profil ran pictures of priests kissing and groping students studying for the priesthood.

The rapid Vatican response contrasted with its slow reaction to a vast sexual abuse scandal in the US Church in 2002, when months passed before action was taken.

Austrian prosecutors charged a seminarian on Monday with downloading child pornography from the internet and said he was not the only person at the seminary to have done so.

St Poelten Bishop Kurt Krenn, responsible for the seminary, has refused calls to resign over the scandal.

The director of the seminary and his assistant, who appeared in the pictures published by Profil, have stepped down.