Porn has been downloaded and shared in Vatican City, the headquarters of the Catholic Church, it has today been claimed.
A list of so called torrent files to have been shared in the tiny city-state within Rome, which houses around 800 people, including the Pope, has been uncovered.
And it reportedly includes female and transsexual porn.
Torrenting is a form of file sharing, which has become popular with fans of illegal downloads because it is harder for authorities to crack down on.
The X-rated activity was uncovered by website Torrent Freak, the New York Post reports.
The blog, which is dedicated to file-sharing news, unearthed the download history from an IP address inside the Pope's city of residence. It is not clear to whom it belongs.
It said while download levels in Vatican City were very low because of its small size, a number of films and TV programmes had been shared.
It said: 'But just when the whole exercise was beginning to fall a bit flat, we spotted some downloads to get pulses racing.
A list of so called torrent files to have been shared in the tiny city-state within Rome, which houses around 800 people, including the Pope, has been uncovered
'It seems that while Vatican dwellers aren’t all that interested in Hollywood movies, they do enjoy adult related celluloid.'
Transsexual porn star Tiffany Starr, and female star Sheena Shaw, are believed to have starred in an XXX-rated video downloaded by someone in Vatican City according to a list on the site.
Someone also downloaded American TV shows such as NBC's Chicago Fire, ABC's The Neighbors and FX's spy drama The Americans.
Reverend Debra Haffner of the Religious Institute told The Huffington Post she was 'not surprised' at the Vatican City findings.
She added over email: 'I'm not surprised learning that anyone looks at erotica on the Internet.'
She also pointed to a 2012 survey by Religious Institute.
It found that 'one in five clergy reported intentionally visiting a sexually explicit website in the past six months.'
But 16 percent of those asked replied that they 'preferred not to answer the question about their personal use of these sites.'
