A SEX scandal and a fierce row over the use of poison gas during the First World War have tainted the beatification tomorrow of Kaiser Karl, the last ruler of the Hapsburg Empire.

A desire not to embarrass the Vatican has prompted the resignation of Kurt Krenn, the Austrian bishop who led the campaign for beatification. He bore administrative responsibility for a seminary in Lower Austria where sexual abuse was rife. Photographs were recently published of seminary priests kissing and fondling their students and 40,000 images depicting paedophile acts were found on the seminary computer.

The rector of the seminary and his assistant stepped down, but Bishop Krenn initially refused to go, despite heavy pressure from the church leadership. As leader of the campaign for the beatification of Kaiser (Emperor) Karl, he was due to travel to the Vatican and pray with the Pope tomorrow.

But to avoid what would have been profound embarrassment for the Vatican, Bishop Krenn, once a stalwart conservative ally of the Pope, had to leave his job before tomorrow’s ceremony.

“I haven’t stepped down for health reasons as I am completely healthy and I certainly did not step down because of public pressure,” he told the Austrian press. “But I always said I would comply with the Pope’s wishes.”

Beatification of the last Kaiser had already been dogged by controversy. The Emperor (simultaneously King of Hungary and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia and Galicia) was by all accounts a devout man. His beatification honours his attempts to withdraw Austria from the First World War and bring an end to hostilities. His widow, Empress Zita, established a Kaiser Karl Prayer League — headed most recently by Bishop Krenn — which actively lobbied for beatification. A Polish nun was found, 38 years after Kaiser Karl’s death in 1922, who claimed that her varicose veins had been cured by the healing intervention of the late Hapsburg ruler. This provided the miracle obligatory for a beatification.

Historians and critical clergymen, however, paint Kaiser Karl as a fickle militarist. When the Austrians were unable to break through against the Italians in the Isonzo Valley in October 1917, the troops fired some 100,000 grenades containing the poison gas Phosgene.

Photographs of the attack show horrific scenes — corpses who had been struggling with inadequate gas masks, soldiers lying next to dead horses and rats, Italian troops who were gassed while playing cards or shaving. Some 40,000 died in the attack. Emperor Karl later described the gas as “very effective”.

“How can you beatify a man who justifies the use of weapons that had been explicitly banned by the Hague war conventions?” asked Father Rudolf Schermann, who publishes the critical church periodical Kirche In. “It is incomprehensible to me as a priest that he can be honoured in this way. It is as if the Muslims were to make a religious icon out of Saddam, who used poison gas against Kurds.”

Father Schermann is also one of many who are suspicious about the Kaiser’s miracle. “It’s laughable, almost blasphemous, to declare that the nun was divinely healed of her varicose veins since she was also taking medication. No wonder people are leaving the Church in droves.”

His attempt to make peace came in 1917 — when the war was already lost for Austria. Until then his peace philosophy was summed up by his declaration: “When our brave army has won its victory then we can delight in the fruits of the peace.”

After the war he abdicated — but critics say that he signed the letter in pencil so that it could be rubbed out. Once he was out of the country he again laid claim to the throne. Kaiser Karl died in exile in Madeira. His son, Otto von Hapsburg, 92, is the current head of the family.

Heinz Fischer, the Austrian President, has steered clear of the controversy by announcing that he is an atheist and therefore unable to attend the Vatican ceremony.

Austria will be represented instead by Andreas Khol, its deeply Roman Catholic parliamentary Speaker.

THE POPE'S MANY SAINTS

• The Pope has beatified 1,340 people during his 25-year pontificate and created 464 saints — more than all his predecessors combined
• Many were “martyrs” of Communism, Fascism or Nazism. In one go he beatified 233 nuns, priests and others killed by Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War
• Those he has canonised include José María Escrivá de Balaguer, the Spanish founder of Opus Dei, who was said to have been close to the Franco regime; Padre Pio, a mystic and healer said to have borne the “stigmata” of Christ; and Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who perished in Auschwitz in 1942
• The Pope has long wanted to canonise Pius XII, the wartime Pope, but critics claim that he turned a blind eye to the Nazi Holocaust and failed to do enough to help Rome’s Jews

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