40,000 photos and child pornography videos in `arch-conservative'
seminary in St Pölten, west of Vienna.

The seminary in St Pölten, west of Vienna, comes under the
authority of the conservative Bishop Kurt Krenn. 

The Vienna news magazine Profil has published pictures of
priests and students engaged in sexual acts, prompting an
uproar, emergency meetings of the church leadership, and calls
for Bishop Krenn's resignation. 

The pictures were said to be part of a cache of some 40,000
photos and child pornography videos found by church officials on
computers at the seminary a year ago. Bishop Krenn refused to
resign and appeared to compound the crisis by saying: "This has
got nothing to do with homosexuality. It's just boys' pranks." 

The Austrian church experienced its worst modern crisis in 1995
when its then head, Cardinal Hans-Hermann Groer, was accused of
paedophilia. Senior church figures eventually found that he had
been molesting boys for years. He was forced to retire, and
died last year. 

Cardinal Groer was deeply conservative and loudly supported by
Bishop Krenn, who has been engaged in a battle for years with
the more liberal Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the current head
of the church in Austria. 

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