A Cologne Catholic priest and other church employees were spotted viewing porn on church computers.
When the organization undertook a month of testing on its IT security systems, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper stated that about 1,000 attempts to view forbidden sites were logged.
It went on to say that there was “no evaluation of the specific content behind the URLs” in question, but there were “no indications of criminally relevant conduct.”
In addition, Katholisch.de, a Catholic Church website in Germany, reported that public prosecutors were independently investigating a layman identified among the 15 on suspicion of carrying “criminal content.”
The church told BBC News that it was working “fully with the state authorities” and that the individual in question was “no longer active” in the organization.
Guido Assmann, the vicar-general of Cologne, said the church was “very aware” of personnel attempting to view restricted content on church computers, but he was “pleased that our security systems were effective.”
“We have a large number of dedicated and dependable employees, and it pains me greatly when individuals’ behavior casts a shadow over their work,” Mr. Guido added.
