PROVIDENCE – Calling his crimes egregious and an enormous violation of the trust to the parishioners he once served, a federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a former Roman Catholic priest to serve six years in prison.

“I’m strongly inclined to give you more than that,” U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith said in sentencing the Rev. James Ward Jackson, 68.

Smith exceeded the five-year term agreed to Assistant U.S. Attorney John McAdams and Jackson’s lawyer, John Calcagni, in sentencing Jackson, a former pastor at St. Mary’s Catholic Parish on Broadway, to 72 months for receiving child pornography.