Austrian Bishop Derides Orgy Claims

The powerful Austrian Catholic church was plunged into its second big sex scandal in a decade yesterday when a seminary run by arch-conservatives was alleged to be the site of orgies among young priests and their teachers.

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. While the Austrian Bishops' Conference issued a statement declaring that "homosexuality and pornography" could have no place at the seminary, 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.

In a country that is officially 90% Catholic, the scandal saw thousands leaving the church and hundreds of thousands joining a petition campaign for reform.

Bishop Krenn became the principal target of the campaign. But he is believed to have powerful allies among conservatives in the Vatican and the Pope demonstrated his support by visiting the diocese in 1998.

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.

While politicians yesterday demanded a criminal investigation into the disclosures about the seminary, Bishop Krenn rebuffed mounting calls for his resignation. Two senior figures at the seminary, one of them an adviser to the bishop, resigned. The director of Austria's Catholic seminaries, Martin Walchhofer, told Austrian television that Bishop Krenn was ultimately responsible for the seminary at the centre of the storm.

"It is shocking that this has happened. The bishop is responsible and he must answer before the Austrian church and before God."

The Forum XXIII Catholic lobby for reform of the Austrian church demanded intervention by the Vatican. Its president, Karl Dillinger, told the Austrian press agency that the church in Austria had plumbed new depths.

"Rome's long silence in the face of the lies, hypocrisy, and scandals is a severe test for the faithful," he said.