Nun prays in protest at "Da Vinci Code" film

Couldn't we pray for something better like feeding starving children, or ending world violence?!

By Andrew Gray
LINCOLN (Reuters) - Sister Mary Michael is no killjoy. Only the other day the 61-year-old Catholic nun was riding around on the back of a motorbike.

But her sense of fun does not extend to "The Da Vinci Code," a film based on the Dan Brown best-seller and starring Tom Hanks that is being filmed this week at the towering Gothic cathedral in her home city of Lincoln, eastern England.

The sister staged a 12-hour prayer vigil to protest at the decision by the building's custodians to let director Ron Howard use it in his movie of the novel, which has angered the Vatican by suggesting Jesus was married and had children.

"It seems to be an attack on the very tenets of the faith," Sister Mary Michael, dressed in a brown habit and pale blue veil, said of the story by the U.S. novelist.

"I was a little afraid that this might bring some disrepute and some badness to the city," she told Reuters at the small red-brick apartment she uses as a Christian community center.

"I love this city and I love the people and I didn't want anything bad to happen."

The sister protested Monday outside the cathedral of pale yellow stone, which perches atop a steep hill of cobbled streets, as the building became a film set complete with scaffolding, giant lights and large trucks parked outside.

Although only Sister Mary Michael and a local Catholic man attended the vigil, they are far from alone in objecting to a book which has 36 million copies in print worldwide.

Conventional Christian teaching has it that Jesus was unmarried and celibate.