Tom Cruise’s Year at the Seminary

Long before he embraced Scientology, Cruise studied for the priesthood. Michael Daly talks to the priests who instructed the star about his surprising religious leap

BEFORE Tom Cruise was a Scientologist, he was a Roman Catholic. For Cruise’s 50th birthday and as Cruise’s third marriage was unravelling, Father Ric Schneider, of the Order of Friars Minor, who recruited Cruise for the seminary decades ago, mailed him a photo, as a memento.

Father Ric took the photo when Cruise was 14, and known by his family name, Mapother. In the photo, Cruise is standing with a boy by a pond. A smiling Cruise is holding a radio-controlled boat the boys built in the hobby shop at St Francis seminary, outside Cincinnati in Mt Health, Ohio.