A priest won $250,000 recently from the popular trivia TV show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," and he pledged to donate a portion of his winnings to a Catholic elementary school.

Fr. Bill Matheny had always dreamed of joining the game show, according to the Catholic News Agency. For 17 years, he tried to get in, and he only got his big break last summer.

Matheny was very careful in his participation in the show, fully aware that he had promised to donate part of his winnings to the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School in St. Alban, West Virginia, a school he attended as a young boy.

He used up all three of his lifelines and successfully took home $250,000 before the show ran out of time. The next day, he came back to the show to compete for $500,000. For his half a million dollar question, the priest was asked which task the Luhn algorithm was used in — changing traffic lights, predicting tornadoes, verifying credit card numbers or conducting a military draft.

Matheny was leaning towards "verifying credit card numbers," but because he was unsure of his answer, he decided to go home with $250,000. 

"If I were playing only for myself, I would've gone for it," he told WSAZ. "It seemed like that logical answer, but I watch the show enough to know that when someone gets to this level what seems logical is not always the right answer. So I was concerned. If it were me, I would've risked it because I could've lived with $50,000, but for the school I couldn't jeopardise $200,000."

It turned out that his preferred but unselected answer —"verifyingt credit card numbers" — was the right one.

Erin Sikora, the principal of St. Francis, was appreciative of Matheny's generous donation, saying any amount the priest chose to give was welcome. They might use the donation to help fund special programmes that teach children with disabilities such as autism and dyslexia.

"We are [going to] be able to do even more, maybe some of the items on our wish list will be checked off," said Sikora. "We are really thankful that he's thought of our school and that it's stayed with him all these years. From the time he was a young child, it has stayed in his heart all these years."

Even though the show was recorded last summer, the episode Matheny appeared in aired only this September.