A shortage of priests, coupled with falling attendances at Mass, may
give rise to a situation whereby, according to the bishop of
Limerick, “some churches will have Mass every second Sunday or one
Sunday a month.”
In an in-depth interview with the Limerick Leader this week, the
bishop of Limerick, Dr Brendan Leahy, said “We are not trying to pretend
it isn’t there. One of the things we are doing here is we have moved
more clearly towards a team ministry model, that is three or four
priests looking after several parishes together. There will be teething
problems because it’s new and we have to think it through but we have to
move in that direction.”
Bishop Leahy acknowledged that the shortage of priests in the future
may mean that a parish priest may find himself in charge of three or
more parishes. He said, “That is going to be a challenge. How can he be
the parish priest of two or three parishes? He can’t keep going with all
the work and administration, so we are going to have to reflect on it.”
Bishop Leahy also said that the role of lay people will be of the utmost importance going forward in the Church in Limerick.
“We are going to see teams of priests but not just teams of priests. I
think we will see lay people working within the teams so that is going
to be a development. Here, for instance, we have the first new lay
general manager, lay diocesan secretary, Catherine Kelly, who replaced
Fr Paul Finnerty – it was always a priest before that.”
Speaking about the future, Bishop Leahy said that while the Diocese
of Limerick may have enough priests to say Mass, “what we may … have is
that not every church will have Mass every Sunday. It might be that some
churches will have Mass every second Sunday or one Sunday a month.”