Officials seen kissing priests
From correspondents in Vienna
July 13, 2004
PICTURES of authorities at a seminary caressing and kissing student priests have been published by a magazine in a sex scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic church in Austria.
The weekly Profil magazine said prosecutors had opened an investigation into the seminary and had found thousands of photographs on portable computers showing acts of pedophilia and bestiality, as well as numerous pornographic films.
Profil said the scandal at the Sankt Poelten seminary, about 80km west of Vienna, erupted after priests decided to put an end to years of silence about the activities there.
It said the seminary director, Ulrich Kuechl, resigned last week.
His deputy, Wolfgang Rothe, was quoted by the magazine as saying he would also resign, without admitting any guilt.
Gay seminary scandal rocks Austria
July 13, 2004 - 7:04AM
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Austria's Roman Catholic Church is launching an investigation into charges of homosexuality between priests and seminarians at a seminary outside Vienna.
A church panel in the Sankt Poelten diocese west of the capital agreed on the inquiry after the news magazine Profil published photographs showing leading clerics of the local seminary fondling and kissing student priests.
Profil said investigators had also found at least 40,000 mostly pornographic photographs at the seminary.
The director of the seminary and his assistant have both quit as details of the scandal emerged in recent days.
"The panel has decided to investigate this issue thoroughly, discuss and assess the results of this inquiry and draw the necessary conclusions from the result," a Church statement said.
Kurt Krenn, Sankt Poelten's controversial bishop, told Austria's ORF television he had seen a compromising photograph of the seminary director fondling another man over his clothes but said the scene had nothing to do with homosexuality.
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This and other shots concerned nothing more than "youthful pranks", said Krenn, who told his interviewer he did not plan to step down because of the scandal.
The Roman Catholic Church has been shaken by a series of sexual abuse scandals across the world. The abuse has cost the American Catholic Church millions of dollars in payments to victims and angered Catholics who held priests in high esteem.
The Church in traditionally Catholic Austria was rocked by a scandal in 1995 when Profil published charges that Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, the then head of the Catholic Church in the country, had sexually abused seminarians. The Vatican replaced him months later and he retired to a monastery.
Krenn, whose close ties to Pope John Paul led to a papal visit to his modest diocese in 1998, has regularly been criticised by lay Catholic groups as an arch-conservative.
The Austrian Bishops Conference said on Sunday the Church had "an urgent need to act" in view of the alleged scandal at the Sankt Poelten seminary.