RTE buys series that has angered US Catholics

A controversial American television series about the life of a young priest working in an impoverished inner-city community has been purchased by RTE and is expected to be broadcast by the station early next year.

ABC television's Nothing Sacred, which has been transmitted in a prime-time slot in the US, has been heavily criticised by right-wing Catholic groups, who have denounced its depiction of the priest, Father Francis Xavier Rayneaux, as a man who sometimes doubts his beliefs. He is portrayed as a man without hard-and-fast answers when confronted by the realities of his community, not least by the circumstances of a woman who wants to have an abortion.

Catholic groups in the US have been so outraged by the series that they have organised boycotts of advertisers whose commercials appear during breaks in the programme. So successful have they been that many companies have withdrawn their advertisements

Nothing Sacred was devised by a Jesuit priest and has been praised by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where it is made, as well as in the Jesuit magazine, America.