The Roman Catholic Church in Austria said it was launching an internal inquiry after a sex and pornographic pictures scandal prompted resignations at the head of a church college for clerics.
"We do not want to hide from this problem," said Bishop Egon Kapellari, the head of the country's Catholic Bishops' Conference, referring to the emergence of thousands of pornographic pictures said to show sex acts committed at the Sankt Poelten seminary, some of them involving under-age boys and even animals.
Earlier, the church news agency Kathpress said the deputy head of the seminary, Wolfgang Rothe, had resigned after some of the pictures published in the weekly magazine Profil showed him embracing young students at the all-male institution.
The seminary director, Ulrich Kuechl, resigned last week, and the bishop of Sankt Poelten, Kurt Krenn, was also under increasing pressure to step down.
Profil charged that Krenn, who is said to be close to both Rothe and Kuechl, had sought to prevent an inquiry into the scandal, describing the alleged sex acts as merely "boyish pranks" that had "absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality".
Krenn, known for his conservative church views, was reported to be refusing to resign over the issue. However Bishop Kapellari said: "When an affair of this nature is revealed to the public, a bishop cannot minimise it.
"On the contrary, he should take immediate measures."
The ORF radio station said on Monday that senior church figures were on the point of petitioning the Vatican to remove Krenn.
However in Rome, the deputy head of the Vatican press service, Ciro Benedettini, told the Austrian APA news agency that the Holy See had no comment to make on the issue.
"What happened is shattering," said Martin Walchhofer, the head of the Austrian network of Catholic seminaries. "The responsibility lies with the bishop," he added.
Paul Zulehner, a theologian, said Bishop Krenn should acknowledge that he was "sick" and resign.
The scandal emerged when Profil published pictures of seminary officials, including Rothe, caressing and kissing student priests. The pictures - about 40,000 in all - were found on the computers of several priests, the magazine said.
It added that prosecutors had opened an investigation into the seminary, and also had retrieved pornographic films.
Acts depicted in the photographs allegedly included sex with minors and animals, the magazine said.
It added that the practices had allegedly been going on for years, and only emerged when certain priests decided that they could no longer remain silent.