A Polish seminary student has been arrested on child porn possession and distribution charges, in the widening probe into an Austrian church scandal that has produced increasing calls for Bishop Kurt Krenn's resignation or ouster.
The unidentified student was charged with downloading numerous child porn images from a Website based in Poland, with as many as forty thousand photos and "numerous" videos – from child porn to priesthood candidates kissing and fondling each other and their elder instructors – found at the seminary at St. Poelten west of Vienna, according to several reports.
The scandal is considered Austria's worst church scandal since the 1995 pedophelia scandal that forced the resignation of Hermann Cardinal Groer, accused of molesting students at an all-male Catholic boarding school in the mid-1970s. Groer died in 2003.
Krenn has acknowledged responsibility for the seminary at the heart of the new scandal but insists the sex images and videos amounted to a schoolboy prank, saying he launched his own internal investigation into the matter under canon law.
The scandal has now included the Archdiocese of Vienna's ombudsman for sex abuse victims joining the chorus demanding that the Vatican oust Krenn as bishop. And, according to one report, the seminary's former deputy director, Wolfgang Rothe, who quit with the director over the affair, has sworn to fight to clear his name, saying he was the victim of a smear campaign.
