BRISBANE archdiocese is anticipating the number of priests in parish ministry to drop by 25 per cent over the next six years.
Commission for Evangelisation and Pastoral Planning chairman Fr Peter Dillon has released the clergy allocation schedule for 2006 and 2011 to assist deaneries in their planning for pastoral leadership and parish structures.
The years 2006 and 2011 correspond with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census years.
The outlook is for priests in parish ministry to drop from 116 to 87 in the next six years.
Fr Dillon said the schedule is particularly important because it can impact a substantial amount of local planning, and will link in with the archdiocesan deanery planning project for 2005, announced by Archbishop John Bathersby in April 2004
He said the schedule is updated yearly, and it will have to be reviewed as circumstances change.
The schedule gives deaneries and parishes a basis to work on, Fr Dillon said.
‘It’s asking us to think outside the parameters we’ve normally been working with,’ he said.
With clergy available in decreasing numbers, it was necessary to find new ways of operating and consider how best to utilise a smaller pool of priests.
The schedule took into account decreases in the number of diocesan priests under the retirement age of 70 and decreases in the number of religious order priests available for parish ministry.
The projections show the number of priests available for parish ministry decreasing to 103 in 2006 and 87 in 2011.
ABS Census data for 2001 showed there were 598,100 Catholics in the archdiocese.
That is projected to increase to 652,179 by 2006 and 706,259 by 2011.
