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The Catholic Church hopes its comic strip will attract teenagers into the priesthood

The Catholic Church launches comic strip in attempt to attract teenagers into priesthood.

The Church hopes that its manga comic, with pictures of nuns and monks playing pool and surfing the internet, will help to improve the image of the vocation, which leaders believe is seen as "monotonous and boring".

The minimum age to enter a seminary is 18, but children as young as 10 are being targeted by the recruitment drive, which is encouraging them to consider life as a parish priest or in a religious order.

"We realise that this kind of commitment is counter-cultural. It requires great sacrifice, and a lot of people see it as monotonous and boring, but actually it is an extremely fulfilling job," he said.

In the typical Catholic diocese, there are four times as many priests aged over 70 as there are under 30, who make up only 7 per cent. The average age of clerics has risen from 57 in 1996 to 61.5 today.