More than 100,000 indecent images and videos of children have been found on the computer of the laicised former papal ambassador Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski.
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that a further 45,000 images had been deleted, and some existed on the laptop he used when he was travelling.
The laicised archbishop was placed under house arrest in the Vatican last week as he awaits a criminal trial for sexually abusing young boys.
The spokesman for the Holy See, Fr Federico Lombardi, released a statement last Tuesday regarding the case of the Polish former archbishop, who served as nuncio to the Dominican Republic until August 2013. A Vatican prosecutor had summoned Wesolowski and informed him of the charges against him, Fr Lombardi said.
He added that Wesolowski could face six or seven years in prison. His arrest was aimed at "preventing the possibility that the accused would flee, and possible evidence-tampering", he added.
He was also charged with possessing child pornography, Lombardi said. His trial will start later this year or early in 2015, Lombardi said.
The possible sentence would have been much longer, but new, stiffer, Vatican laws on paedophilia cannot be applied because the alleged crimes took place before the laws came into force in September 2013.
Because of the “gravity of the accusations” investigators decided to arrest the former ambassador, the spokesman said, but "in light of the medical condition of the accused, supported by medical documentation", he was placed under house arrest in Vatican City. The Vatican announced in June that a canonical court had investigated Wesolowski on charges of sexual abuse in the Dominican Republic and concluded by dismissing him from the clerical state, depriving him of all rights and duties associated with being a priest except the obligation of celibacy. Wesolowski would face a criminal trial under the laws of Vatican City State, the Vatican said at the time.
Fr Lombardi said on Tuesday that the Vatican authorities had acted in accordance with the “will expressed by the Pope, that such a grave and delicate case might be addressed without delay, with the just and necessary rigour, with the full assumption of responsibility by the institutions of the Holy See”.
Wesolowski is one of the most senior Catholic clerics to face charges for abuse, and the first nuncio to do so.
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