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Seminary of the Pius Brotherhood in Zaitzkofen in the Upper Palatinate (archive picture)
Photo: Armin Weigel / picture-alliance / dpa
After a corona outbreak in a seminary in the Regensburg district, 50 people tested positive for the virus.
44 priests as well as six nuns and auxiliary workers were infected as of Monday, said the Regensburg district office.
First the "Mittelbayerische Zeitung" reported.
The 56 residents of the seminary of the Catholic Pius Brothers in Schierling were quarantined.
There are no clear indications of what the corona outbreak is due to, said a spokesman.
"We all live in isolation now"
The seminary rain announced that it was suspected that a seminarian had brought the virus with him at the start of the new academic year.
The man himself was symptom-free.
Only at the end of October eleven new seminarians had moved into Zaitzkofen; they came from Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Poland, Belarus and Lebanon.
"We all live in isolation now," said the rain to the Bavarian radio.
Some of the infected confreres would show symptoms.
The seminar operates in close coordination with the local health department.
According to the district office, nothing is known about infections outside the facility due to the outbreak.
Arch-conservative group
The Pius Brothers are considered an arch-conservative group, they reject essential decisions of the Second Vatican Council.
Association no longer has canonical status since 1975 - priestly and episcopal ordinations take place without the permission of Rome.
The brotherhood was founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
The Pius Brothers have been running the seminary in Zaitzkofen Castle since 1978.
Pope John Paul II excommunicated unauthorized consecrated clergy, Pope Benedict XVI.
lifted the excommunications in 2009.
Parts of the Pius Brotherhood are openly anti-Semitic, as the scandal surrounding Holocaust denier Richard Williamson showed.
For the Pius Brothers, secularism and atheism are synonymous with mortal sin, the writings of the Enlightenment are "heresies".
They condemn abortions, contraception, interest speculation, equality, homosexuality and pornography.
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