A ROMAN Catholic priest who downloaded child porn on the parish computer was yesterday ordered to start a sex offender treatment programme.

Father Denis McNamara, 59, pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to making 1,644 indecent images of children.

Nigel Power, prosecuting, told the court McNamara, the parish priest at St Teresa's Church in Devon Street, St Helens, confessed he had been viewing the images.

The court heard that on January 29 last year, McNamara contacted the child protection co-ordinator for the Archdiocese because he was filling in a form for the Criminal Records Bureau and was under the false impression that the police would be aware of what he had been doing.

McNamara, of Church Road, Formby, went to see Father John Heneghan at his church in Southport.

Mr Power told the court: "He said that for some time he had been accessing child pornography from the computer in his private room at the presbytery.

"He said that the websites he visited were adult hard core and that he was heterosexual. His attraction was to pre-pubescent girls aged 11 to 14."

For a period of two or three years, McNamara visited sites that contained child pornography but not sites that required payment, the court heard.

The church internet connection was paid for by the parish.

McNamara confessed he spent around three hours a night downloading and saving the images but in the morning he deleted them out of shame.

Mr Power said he told Father Heneghan, who contacted the police, that he needed help.

During his interview with detectives, McNamara said his relationships with the children he visited in schools were healthy and that he had no inclination to do anything to young girls.

The court heard that the majority of the images downloaded by McNamara, a recovered alcoholic, were in the least serious category.

Raymond Herman, defending, said it was unlikely he would ever be able to work for the church again. He said: "His life is in tatters."

Judge Henry Globe QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, said he felt McNamara would benefit from help and sentenced him to a three-year community rehabilitation order with the condition he attends the Sex Offenders' Treatment Programme.

He also ordered him to sign the Sex Offenders' Register and banned him from owning or using a computer capable of downloading indecent images of children for five years.

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Liverpool said: " Denis McNamara volunteered to remove himself from his duties and has not been involved in any church activities since. "The Archdiocesan authorities will now consider what action is appropriate with regard to Denis McNamara."