How suitable is "僧侶" for "priest"?


Page 79 of Fluent Forever's "Awesome Word List" for Japanese gives 僧侶 as the
Japanese word for "priest", listed just after "教会" for "church". How suitable
is it for "priest", if at all?

Doing a google image search for "僧侶" mainly gave Buddhists (though that could
be because more Chinese-speakers and Japanese-speakers are Buddhists than
Christians), the [English language
Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%83%A7%E4%BE%B6#Japanese)
translates it as Buddhist monks, while jisho.org says "priest; monk​ -
Buddhist term" (seemingly saying that both "priest" and "monk" are Buddhist
terms). The Japanese language's disambiguation page for
[僧侶](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%83%A7%E4%BE%B6_\(%E6%9B%96%E6%98%A7%E3%81%95%E5%9B%9E%E9%81%BF\))
has mention of Christianity.




僧侶 (僧) is sometimes used as a catch-all term for priests and monks of non-
Asian religions. This is typically true for imaginary religions in fiction.
For example [priests/僧侶 in _Dragon Quest_
franchise](http://dragonquest.wikia.com/wiki/Priest) do not look like that of
Buddhism at all.

僧侶 is rare for Christian clergies because Christianity has the set of better-
known terms like 修道士.




僧侶 (僧) is sometimes used as a catch-all term for priests and monks of non-
Asian religions. This is typically true for imaginary religions in fiction.
For example [priests/僧侶 in _Dragon Quest_
franchise](http://dragonquest.wikia.com/wiki/Priest) do not look like that of
Buddhism at all.

僧侶 is rare for Christian clergies because Christianity has the set of better-
known terms like 修道士.

