The sober-looking advert fills a quarter of a page
in Switzerland's premier "executive search" magazine, but the kind of
vacancy it is trying to fill is no ordinary one.
Along with no pay,
"freedom from the common couple relationship" is cited as an upside of a
profession for which new members are desperately sought.
The recruitment drive has been launched by
Switzerland's normally reclusive Roman Catholic Capuchin monks.
The
religious order is in such perilous decline that it has been obliged to
take the unprecedented step of advertising for fresh blood in the
country's main job-vacancy magazine, Alpha, which has a circulation of
more than one million.
"We are chronically
over-aged," Willi Anderau, the spokesman for the Swiss Capuchins, said.
"There are hardly any people joining the order these days, we are
suffering from what might be described as a personnel shortage – so a
job-vacancy advert is quite logical."
The advertisement appeared in the "banking and
insurance" section of Saturday's edition of Alpha.
It calls on young
Catholic "bankers, journalists, teachers, theologians, tradesmen,
lawyers and communication experts aged between 22 and 35" to consider
joining the order.
Applicants, the advert says, should be "independent, yet capable of communal living, curious and show initiative".
But
life in the order is about as far removed from an average banking or
insurance executive's lifestyle as it is possible to get.
The advert
makes this clear: "We offer you no pay, but spirituality and prayer,
contemplation, an egalitarian lifestyle, free of personal material
riches and the common model of a couple relationship."
It
takes three years of apprenticeship before novices can be fully
ordained as monks.
Monastery life is structured with prayer, community
life and work.
"Anyone who thinks they can take it easy here has got it
wrong," Mr Anderau said.
The recruitment drive
has been launched in a desperate attempt to stop Switzerland's Capuchins
from simply dying out.
The Franciscan order has halved in size over the
past decade and now has only 200 members left in the country.
Their
average age is 70.
Two monasteries have been forced to close and a third
in the Appenzell region is due to shut down next year.
The monks hope
to attract between 10 and 20 new members through their recruitment
drive.
But Switzerland's Capuchin monks are not
alone; a dramatic decline in the number of Roman Catholic monks and
nuns has occurred on a global scale over the past three decades, their
ranks dropping by a quarter.
Vatican figures
released two years ago showed that the number of "members of the
consecrated life" had fallen worldwide by nearly 95,000 to 945,000 in
the space of just one year between 2005 and 2006.
The trend is being
exacerbated because there are hardly any new recruits to replace monks
and nuns who die.
Remarkably, the dramatic decline has coincided with a
surge in the number of "stressed executives" seeking temporary escape
from the rigours of their jobs by going on weekends or weeks of
spiritual contemplation that are now offered at several monasteries in
Europe.
Mr Anderau said the Capuchin's advert
was only the start of a broader campaign which would encourage people
from other walks of life, such as social workers, to join the order.
He
said he believed the decline could be halted if the public was better
informed.
"Most people's idea of being a monk is a cliché," Mr Anderau
said.
"We try to live the Franciscan way of life in the 21st century. Hardly anyone wears a habit these days."
Yet
Swiss experts on religion doubt the Capuchin's campaign will achieve
its aim.
Georg Otto Schmid, who has done research on the decline of
monasteries, said: "It may be trendy to take a holiday in a monastery,
but spending one's life in one is an not an attractive idea for most
people.
"Most people only think about joining an order when they find themselves running a whole gamut of crises."
SIC: TI/UK