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Priest at prayer an online hit

Paris: The French love of reality programmes encompasses the music talent show Star Academy and match-making for lonely rural farmers. But now the French Catholic church has jumped on the bandwagon with a show about priests that has become an internet phenomenon.

The diocese of Besancon in eastern France has launched Pretre Academy — Priest Academy — to mark its first ordination of a new local priest for three years.

In episodes available online, viewers can watch Franck Ruffiot, 30, demonstrate how he prays, pay a visit to a trendy contemporary artist friend and explain his feelings in a diary room.

The show began as a marketing drive to reach young people as the church struggles with declining numbers — each year 500 priests retire or die in France while only 100 recruits join the clergy.

But the episodes showing the priests’ somewhat mundane local lives have become a kind of light-hearted cult viewing online, with the first two instalments netting more than 1,50,000 hits and the final episode due this week. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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