Austrian prosecutors charged a would-be priest yesterday with downloading Internet child pornography and said other people did the same at a Roman Catholic seminary at the heart of a sex scandal.

Prosecutors in Sankt Poelten west of Vienna said they had scoured personal computers seized from eight seminarians and the seminary?s central computer.

They found child pornography on the main computer and on one owned by a 27-year-old seminarian from Poland, and charged him.

?The material that was secured contained pornographic representations of minors as well as so-called violent pornography,? prosecutors said in a statement.

They said the material downloaded on the main computer could not be traced to an individual since all seminarians used the same password. But prosecutors said they could rule out the Pole as the one who had viewed child pornography on the central computer.

The computers were searched after the seminary itself alerted police late last year when a technician investigating a virus problem on the central computer found downloads of child pornography.

The computer probe and recently revealed pictures of priests fondling and kissing adult seminarians have led to the resignation of the seminary?s leader and deputy head and calls from many in this predominantly Catholic country for the resignation of Sankt Poelten?s bishop, Kurt Krenn.