CORRAN PIKE reckons he's a regular Aussie bloke. He was born here, he's under 30 and he enjoys mucking about with his mates.
What makes him unusual is that he's just become a Catholic priest, an increasingly rare vocation in modern Australia.
This is a problem for the church, because the number of priests being ordained each year is falling well short of those leaving.
Just 23 Catholic diocesan priests were ordained nationwide in 2001, fewer than half the 49 priests who died or quit the clergy in the same year.
The number of diocesan priests in Australia peaked at 2498 in 1973, and that figure has now fallen to fewer than 1800.
Many dioceses around the country are bringing in priests from countries such as Poland in an attempt to cover the shortfall of locally-ordained clergy. Even those priests who are trained locally are mainly drawn from overseas.
When five priests were ordained in Perth on Friday, Father Pike was the only one born in Australia. The others came from Vietnam, Korea, Spain and India, while a sixth deacon from Sri Lanka will be ordained today in Bunbury.
Father Pike understands this trend only too well. The 29-year-old was taught at one of Perth's biggest Catholic schools, Newman College, but he is its first graduate in 25 years to enter the priesthood.
He was doing a business degree in Perth when his father, former state Liberal MP Bob Pike, died unexpectedly in 1994.
"When dad died I started thinking long and hard about where I wanted to be," he said.
So at the age of 23 he entered Perth's St Charles Seminary, much to the surprise of his friends. But while his mates were unsure about his career choice at first, Father Pike says they have become used to the idea.
"I'm still the same bloke they used to knock around with. I can be normal with them, and I don't have to be somebody I'm not."
Michael Mason, a researcher with the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, says the number of priests being ordained has been in decline since the 1960s.
"The impact is being felt in the number of parishes that now don't have a resident priest," Father Mason said.
While some parishes had amalgamated, many relied increasingly on lay pastoral administrators.
Father Mason said the falling number of ordinations was in part due to the Catholic Church taking greater care whom it accepted for the priesthood, and the smaller number of those taking a vocation.
Allegations of sexual misconduct had made the selections process more rigorous, and had damaged the standing of priesthood as a career.
"It's an unusual profession," he said. "You can't just go out and hire some people if you need more."