Roman Catholic priests are rapidly becoming an endangered species, with the scandal over clerical child abuse exacerbating a long-term decline in vocations.
New figures show that this year only 18 new priests are due to be ordained in England and Wales, a sharp fall from last year, when there were 44. In 2002 there were 63 ordinations, 34 in 2001 and 52 in 1995.
In half of the Church's 22 dioceses there will be no ordinations at all, according to the figures compiled by the Church's National Vocation Office.
Projections confirm that numbers for the rest of the decade are expected to be significantly lower than previous years, and the total number of parish priests serving four million Catholics is now 3,778, down from 7,000 in 1980.
With the bishops increasingly closing churches and merging parishes, including in Catholic strongholds such as Liverpool, the ageing and stressed clergy are finding themselves responsible for larger and larger areas.
"The child abuse scandal has been a contributory factor, but numbers were in decline long before," said Fr Shaun Middleton, the parish priest of St Francis of Assissi in Notting Hill, London, and a former spokesman for the National Council of Priests.
"People look at priests these days and see a group of worn out men struggling with a very difficult life.
"They see priests as potential child abusers as well as sad and lonely. Who in their right minds is going to be attracted by that?"
Fr Middleton said that the numbers of priests in England and Wales could halve over the next 10 years, and the Church might start importing a growing number of clergy from Eastern Europe and Asia.
He said he did not believe that allowing priests to marry would solve the problem because it would raise a new set of difficulties and may not have much impact on falling numbers.
The series of child abuse scandals, which has seen more than 20 clergy convicted for offences against children in England and Wales over the past 20 years, has been far more damaging in Ireland.
The Church there is in such difficulties attracting vocations that its archbishops have invited the Pope to visit in the hope of boosting its profile.
Ireland once provided an abundant supply of priests but, dogged by a decade of child abuse revelations, only one will be ordained in the Dublin diocese this year and none the next.
The Roman Catholic Church lost it constitutional role in the Irish state in the Seventies, but in the Nineties it suffered a shattering blow to its moral authority when it emerged that systematic abuse had been covered up with offending clergy moved from parish to parish.
While there are still 7,500 priests, brothers and monks in Ireland their average age is 63 and their numbers are dwindling.
Fr Kevin Doran, the national co-ordinator for diocesan vocations, admitted that the abuse was a cause for the decline but also blamed Ireland's materialistic society and unwillingness for long-term commitments.
"The abuse is certainly a factor but the decline in numbers goes back a lot further than that," he said. "Obviously this issue is discouraging for priests and might make them less pro-active in encouraging others to join."
The Irish State is facing an estimated £500 million bill after it agreed to compensate the victims, with the Church making a contribution of £62 million.
John Kelly, a spokesman for Survivors of Child Abuse, believes that the decline could be reversed only if the Church "faced up to its horrendous past crimes".
He said: "Because of what they did to children people don't trust them. It must be very difficult now for young priests coming through, with the Church badly damaged - people have lost their faith in it."
Irish nuns, who have done so much to alleviate poverty around the world, are also in danger of disappearing. If current trends continue there will be just 500 nuns left in Ireland within 15 years compared with 11,000 in 1999.
According to to the Belfast Telegraph "it would be a very big mistake" for the Church to believe that a high turn-out for a visit by the Pope this autumn would mean "that Irish Catholicism is alive and kicking. It is about as robust and vigorous as that poor old man himself".