A Belfast parish is seeking to appoint a 'parish manager' to free up priests for exclusively pastoral duties.
St Oliver Plunkett Parish in Lenadoon in the west of the city has
decided to appoint a person who would take responsibility for the
financial and other practical needs of the local parish community.
Parish Priest Fr Martin Magill said the role of a priest had changed
considerably during the past ten years and he had found ''that an
increasing amount of my time has been taken up at the desk''.
The role of the parish manager will be to administer and provide
day-to-say supervision of the financial and temporal affairs of the
parish, to allow the parish priest to concentrate on the spiritual
affairs of the parish.
Representing
The manager's role will involve coordinating and facilitating the
administrative affairs of the parish, engaging with the community and
representing and promoting the parish externally.
''We are explicit about their purpose. Their purpose is to free up
the priest of the parish to allow them to concentrate on the pastoral
and spiritual needs of the parish community,'' according to Fr Magill.
''At present Down & Connor facilitators are listening to
parishioners' concerns and even at an early stage one of the concerns is
that priests are taken up with administration. We hope this will be
some way to alleviating the burden on clergy,'' Fr Magill said.