Student charged as scandal engulfs church

A 27-year-old seminary student has been charged with possession and distribution of child pornography as an investigation widened into Austria’s worst church sex scandal in nearly a decade.

State prosecutor Walter Nemec said the student, whose name was not released, downloaded ”numerous” lurid photos from a website based in his native Poland.

Authorities say up to 40,000 photos and numerous videos, including child pornography and pictures of candidates for the priesthood kissing and fondling each other and their older instructors, were found at the Roman Catholic seminary in St. Poelten, 50 miles west of Vienna.

The affair, which has outraged many people in the overwhelmingly Catholic nation, is reminiscent of a 1995 paedophilia scandal that forced then-Cardinal Hermann Groer to resign. Groer, who died last year, had been accused of molesting students at an all-male Catholic boarding school in the mid-1970s.

Nemec said the Polish student was charged with distribution as well as possession because the images of children in sexual situations were stored on computers that were readily available to other students at the seminary.

If tried and convicted, the suspect could face up to two years in prison.

Bishop Kurt Krenn, in charge of the diocese, has been under intense pressure to resign since the discovery of the material.

Krenn, 68, has acknowledged his overall responsibility for the seminary but has refused to step down. He contends the priest sex photos were merely part of a “schoolboy prank” and that the furore over the affair is overblown. He has launched an internal inquiry.

The Archdiocese of Vienna’s ombudsman for victims of sexual abuse has urged the Vatican to remove Krenn as bishop. Two other influential Catholic lay organisations also have demanded that Krenn resign.