With no-one to ring the bells, a Russian Orthodox parish in Western Siberia has turned to new technology. The priest is now ringing the changes with a computer.

Modern technology has finally found its way into one of the age-old aspects of that most conservative of institutions – the Church.

A distant village in the Kemerovsky region in western Siberia has found it hard to attract a bell ringer. So Father Vladimir Bratonec decided to bless his parishioners with a piece of computer magic.

“We are all sceptical about innovation. But if it aims to benefit the Church, it helps,” he said.

A machine is wired up to a computer and, using magnets, it is able to duplicate thousands of melodies. It can be programmed a year in advance to fit all the church's feasts and religious occasions and, like all the best gadgets, it's remote-controlled.

Its new owners say only a professional bellringer would be able to distinguish between the computer and a real person.

Now Father Vladimir spends as much time studying his computer manual as he does reading scriptures.