The Benedictine monks at the Portsmouth Abbey in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, are aging - five are octogenarians and the youngest is approaching 50 - and their numbers have fallen to 12, from a peak of about 24 in 1969.

So the monks, who for centuries have shied away from outside distractions, have taken to the Internet with an elaborate ad campaign featuring videos, a blog and even a Gregorian chant ringtone.

“If this is the way the younger generation are looking things up and are communicating, then this is the place to be,” said Abbot Caedmon Holmes, who has been in charge of the abbey since 2007.

The monks have embraced Facebook, a new Web site (portsmouthabbeymonastery. org) that answers questions on how to become a monk (“Do I have to give up my car?” Yes) and print ads that announce “God Is Calling.”

“If 500 years ago, blogging existed, the monks would have found a way to make use of it,” Abbot Holmes said. “In the end it’s God who is calling people to himself and calling to people to live in union with him. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do our part.”

For some, technology may seem at odds with the image of a monastic existence. Not so, say the monks: even the Vatican has its own YouTube channel and a Facebook page.

The campaign presents the monks “as being open and friendly and totally accessible,” said Tom Simons, the chief executive and creative director of Partners and Simons, the Boston-based advertising agency the abbey hired. The Facebook page will allow the monks “to build out their fan base,” he said.

Mr. Simons recalled his first sight of Brother Gregory Havill, entering the ad agency in his monk’s robe while electronic music played in the background.

“I think Brother Gregory felt he had arrived in a brand/digital advertising theme park and he was alternatively bemused and delighted,” Mr. Simons said . His company and BPI, a film production company, created online videos that focused on how the monks heard the call and what monastic life is like, and they invited visitors. The goal was to capture “their warmth, their sincerity, their gentleness,” he said.

Brother Havill’s story plays a role in the campaign. One day 10 years ago, while waiting for a sandwich in the microwave, Brother Havill says he heard the call to “go to Portsmouth.”

He at first thought “Portsmouth” referred to the port in England that many of his ancestors had traveled through on their way to the United States.

“I didn’t have any plans to become a monk,” said Brother Havill, who at the time was an art teacher and sculptor living alone in Cromwell, Connecticut.

The abbey is attached to a high school , where some of the monks work, including Brother Havill, who uses an iPad to teach art. They can use technology to teach or for work, Brother Havill said, but “you won’t find monks out there playing with their iPads.”

Students from Catholic boarding schools like the one at Portsmouth used to join the monastery, but “the number has precipitously declined,” said Francis Russell Hittinger, a professor of Catholic studies at the University of Tulsa, in Oklahoma.

David Moran, director of monastic renewal at the abbey, said he will help the monks learn to blog, which they will do between the five religious services they observe each day.

But no Twitter. “Not yet,” he said. The social networking tool “requires a regularity in posting that we would find very difficult to maintain.”


By TANZINA VEGA