RUSSIA: Tall, handsome Fr Maxim Rozhkov is the poster boy for Russia's religious revival. A former model and self-confessed party lover, he found God four years ago and joined the ever-swelling ranks of monks at the country's refurbished monasteries.
Fr Max is not alone. The collapse of communism, coupled with the chaos of capitalism, have seen Russians return to the church in droves. While churches in western Europe fret over declining attendances, their Russian cousins are preparing for a bumper turnout for tomorrow's orthodox Easter celebrations.
The spiritual journey of Fr Max follows that of modern Russia. In the early 1990s the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed modelling to become a profession, and the blonde, blue-eyed Muscovite tasted success. And excess. "I enjoyed myself, I was at a party every night. It was easy to do," he says.
But the optimism of the early years gave way to despair as the majority of Russians found themselves worse off under democracy than they had been under Soviet rule.
Fr Max drifted from one modelling job to another. He changed jobs and girlfriends as the years marched on. Then four years ago a friend told him about the Optima Pushtyn monastery outside Moscow, where writers such as Tolstoy and Gogol had once recharged their spiritual batteries. Broke and depressed, he took the bus there, and was hooked. He joined a process called cleansing, a sort of spiritual vacuum-cleaning involving prayer, wood chopping, plain food and early starts. Cue enlightenment and the decision to become a trainee monk with a vow of celibacy.
"After the cleansing I had the goodness coming upon me. It was like a fire," he says. "It was like coming back home after a very long journey."
Growing numbers of Russians agree. A century ago Russia's orthodox church boasted 55,000 churches and 559 monasteries. Most were closed, or turned into warehouses and offices, when the Bolsheviks swept to power in 1917. Comrade Stalin dynamited Moscow's Church of Christ the Saviour cathedral and built a swimming pool in its place.
The rebuilding of this cathedral, as a carbon copy of the original, began the long road back in the 1990s. "How much money does it take to be happy? How much drink, how much sex?" Max tells me. "I can tell you 100 per cent: money and girls do not bring happiness."
This revival has come despite, or perhaps because, churchmen refused to change their ways. Further west, Europe's churchmen obsess about becoming "relevant" to a modern audience. Not so in the east, where tradition and services remain solemn affairs, with only the elderly allowed to sit.
"Orthodox churches would say their unique selling point is that they have stayed close to the original form of eastern Christianity," says Victoria Clark, author of Why Angels Fall, a study of the religion. "That's why they dress in that way, that's why their services are so exotic, full of candles and incense. And it's a success."
Fr Max now sports a beard and works with the homeless and drug addicts of Russia's cities. He tells me the path is not always easy. "Temptations do not go away. You accumulated these passions so you should not expect them to disappear. The point about temptations is that they will keep coming, and you must keep resisting them."