Current staffing levels provided by priests to parishes cannot continue, according to the Archbishop of Cashel and Emly Kieran O’Reilly.
In a pastoral letter read out at Masses, the archbishop warned that the current staffing levels provided by priests to parishes will not continue and that the model of Church, as people have known it, is being replaced by a new reality.
The diocese is preparing to implement a reorganisation of its parishes and has begun the process of training pastoral workers.
“In future, it will be essential to have lay people more involved and engaged with their priests and with one another in building witnessing communities of faith,” Archbishop O’Reilly said. This would call for openness to change as the diocese plans its church life for the future.
As with the other dioceses in Ireland, Cashel and Emly was moving into a new way of being church which would open new possibilities of participation for members of the faith community. The archbishop said he was writing the pastoral letter “to highlight the present reality” regarding the number of priests ministering in the archdiocese.
Currently 68 diocesan priests, whose average age is 67, minister in the diocese. Over the next five years 16 priests will reach the retirement age of 75. At the same time there will be at most 35 priests under the age of 75 serving in the diocese, which has just one candidate at the moment training for the priesthood.
Faced with this reality, the archbishop saidd that “change is coming soon in how we organise parish life”. He future organisation would call for the formation of different pastoral units, encompassing several parishes functioning together to serve the pastoral needs of their communities.
“The organisation of these units will involve priests and lay people working together in a spirit of co-responsibility,” Archbishop O’Reilly explained.
He said the formation of parish pastoral teams in parishes, which is underway, would be central to the future.
Cashel and Emly will inaugurate these new pastoral units at the beginning of Advent 2022 in November. This will involve rearranging of Mass times, in particular Sunday Mass times, in coordination with other parishes.
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