A leading figure in Catholic education in the United Kingdom has admitted downloading more than 5000 child pornography images.
Fr Tim Gardner, a former religious education adviser to the Catholic Education Service (CES), admitted possession of the images when he appeared at Southwark Crown Court.
Of the 5005 images cited, many were graded at level four and five – the most extreme – and one depicted bestiality.
Fr Gardner, a Dominican friar, is understood to have been arrested last August and charged last month.
He taught Philosophy and Religious Education at Maria Fidelis Convent School in Camden, north London, and was Catholic chaplain to the Royal Free Hospital in London.
He was also a governor of Rye St Antony, a girls’ school in Oxford.
Fr Gardner will be sentenced on March 31.
Bishop Malcolm McMahon, chairman of the CES and a fellow Dominican, said he was deeply troubled at the offending.
“Our first thoughts and prayers are with those innocent victims who have been the subject of abuse,” the bishop said.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the leader of a Catholic workers’ lobby group resigned after it was revealed he was being investigated on child pornography possession allegations.
Georg Hupfauer, former head of the 120,000-member Katholischer Arbeiter-Bewegung (KAB), quit on March 5 following press reports he was suspected of possessing child porn.
The KAB, a 165-year-old workers’ organisation, which lobbies in Germany and abroad for social justice from a Catholic perspective, said it was reeling from shock and would now be fighting to save its reputation.
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