Arrest In Seminary Sex Scandal

Prosecutors on Monday charged a 27-year-old Polish candidate for the priesthood with possession and distribution of child pornography, invoking a tough new federal law in a widening investigation into a vast cache of lurid images found at a seminary.

The student, whose name was not released, had downloaded "numerous" photographs from a Web site in his native Poland, state prosecutor Walter Nemec said in a statement. If tried and convicted, he faces up to two years in prison.

Authorities say some 40,000 photos and numerous videos, including child pornography, sadomasochistic sexual acts and pictures of trainee priests kissing and fondling each other and their older instructors, were found at the seminary in St. Poelten, 50 miles west of Vienna.

The discovery, and the subsequent furor in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Austria, triggered the country's worst church sex scandal since a cardinal was forced to resign amid allegations of pedophilia in 1995.

Nemec said the 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.

The suspect, who has been expelled from the seminary, was charged under a tough new federal child pornography law that came into effect in May, increasing the maximum penalty from six months in prison to two years and a fine.

Investigators who seized and examined the computers' hard drives suspect that eight other seminarians may have been involved, but proving it may not be possible because the computers were shared and individual students were not assigned user IDs, Nemec said.

The criminal investigation has steered well clear of the priest sex photos, he added, stressing that "homosexual relations between consenting adults" are not a crime in Austria.

Michael Dinhobl, a spokesman for embattled Bishop Kurt Krenn, who oversees the diocese where the seminary is located, said an internal inquiry was trying to determine whether other students were implicated in the child porn aspect of the case.

Michael Stickelbroeck, a theologian serving on an eight-member panel Krenn appointed last week, was quoted by the Austrian Catholic news agency Kath.net as saying he would welcome a Vatican inspection and promised to respond "in accordance with the truth."

The affair has rekindled anger and disgust among Austrian Catholics still scandalized by pedophilia allegations that surfaced in 1995 against the late Cardinal Hermann Groer, prompting the Vatican to oust him as the country's top churchman.

Groer, who died last year, had been accused of molesting students at an all-male Catholic boarding school in the mid-1970s.

Krenn, a conservative who has dismissed the priest sex photos as part of a "schoolboy prank," has been under intense pressure to resign since the discovery of the seminary porn stash.

The Archdiocese of Vienna's ombudsman for victims of sexual abuse has urged the Vatican to remove Krenn, 68, as bishop. Two other influential Catholic lay organizations also have demanded that Krenn resign. He has refused, insisting the case has been blown out of proportion.

The seminary's former deputy director Wolfgang Rothe, meanwhile, vowed to fight for "truth, justice and honor" and to clear his name.

Rothe, who resigned along with the seminary's director the Rev. Ulrich Kuechl contended in a message posted on a diocese Web site Monday that he was the victim of an "unimaginable" smear campaign.

"The confidence and encouragement of numerous people who know me have given me the strength after days of deepest despair and darkness to fight for truth, justice and honor," Rothe said.