Church seeks to recruit priests

Father Neil Byrne posed in the Catholic Church recruitment calendar

The Catholic Church in England and Wales is launching a campaign to replace its retiring priests.

The move comes as the church struggles to find replacements, despite a modest upturn in the number of new recruits in the past five years.

The campaign is encouraging young men to consider whether the religious life might be for them.

The numbers of those willing to enter the Catholic church has fallen steadily, to a low of 24 in 2003.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott says that in an affluent, secular and liberal society, the demands of poverty and chastity have become increasingly hard for young men to meet.

The church says that due to the low intake of new priests, many diocese are having to rationalise their deployment of priests as a result.

There was a feeling we should only accept men who had life experience, whatever that is exactly Father Paul Grogan Calling new priests

Father Paul Grogan, the vocation director for the Diocese of Leeds, says there has been an increase both in the numbers of people entering seminary in the past five years, and in the confidence of priests to encourage young men to follow in their footsteps.

"We used to have junior seminaries but I think the last one closed probably about 20 years ago.

"There was a feeling we should only accept men who had life experience, whatever that is exactly.

"There is a sense now that if a boy is coming forward at the age of 14 or 15, as has happened on several occasions in recent years in Leeds Diocese, it's just simply nonsensical to say to him well, come back in eight or nine years time when you've got more life experience."

The Catholic church has previously used such schemes as beer mats to publicise its message.

This year it is circulating thousands of posters and calendars to parishes, universities and schools as well as videos, in which seminarians explain why they wanted to become priests.

Last year, twelve Catholic priests from the Diocese of Leeds posed for a calendar designed to try to recruit young men to the priesthood.

They were pictured in an array of activities, including reading celebrity magazines, watching baseball and doing DIY.