Clustering ‘is not the answer to the priest shortage’

TWO CO-FOUNDERS of the Association of Catholic Priests have criticised the Irish bishops’ clustering of parishes to offset the decline in priest numbers.

In an open letter to Pope Francis, Fr Tony Flannery, along with the leaders of church reform groups in the US, Austria and Germany, asks the Pope to stop the use of clustering – grouping parishes under one priest – and parish closures by local bishops.

Fr Flannery said: “Older priests are finding that in their seventies they are now under more pressure with more work than 20 years ago when they were in the prime of their life.”

He warned that within 10 years, half of all parishes in Ireland will have no priests; and within 23, three-quarters of them will be priestless.

“Clustering is a way of trying to keep the show going with older priests but it will inevitably lead to where the Americans are now – the wholesale closure of parishes, particularly in the Archdiocese of New York,” he said.

His criticisms were echoed by Fr Brendan Hoban who warned that a new reality is dawning in the Irish Church in which priests are not being replaced and Masses are being curtailed.

In the Archdiocese of Tuam this year, three priests who have reached the age of retirement have agreed to carry on, “camouflaging an inevitable reality”, he said.