Report to Bishop Richard Malone due in June
Catholic churches around Maine are counting their money and their parishioners as they prepare to make recommendations that may close some local parishes.
By this June, those recommendations are due to the leader of Maine’s Catholics, Bishop Richard Malone.
The reasons are fewer priests and, in some cases, shrinking congregations.
“Right now, we’re in the exploratory stage,” the Rev. Angelo Levasseur, the pastor of St. Athanasius and St. John Catholic Church in Rumford.
Levasseur’s parish is the centerpiece of a cluster of churches that includes the towns of Roxbury Pond, Mexico, Dixfield and Bethel.
It’s one of 27 clusters, each defined by Maine’s Catholic diocese. They include one for the Farmington area, one for the northern portion of Cumberland County and one each for Lewiston and Auburn, creating a cluster boundary along the river between the cities.
The self-examination of Maine’s churches began last year, when Malone and other Catholic leaders outlined needs to cut costs and respond to the priest shortage.
By 2010, their number is forecast to drop from 97 to only 61. But Maine has 135 Catholic parishes.
There are too few to go around.
Meanwhile, the state’s Catholic population, estimated in 2005 at about 234,000, seems to be drifting to the coast.
The church reorganization has already begun. That’s what led to the new announcement over the consolidation of daily Masses. It also led to the recent disclosure that Lewiston-Auburn’s parochial schools would merge.
The next step is closing churches. Such decisions will be hard, though.
“Each cluster needs to put forward a plan and explain it,” said Debra Michaud, an administrative assistant at the diocese office in Portland.
Like the Rumford cluster, churches in Lewiston are also gathering information, said the Rev. Lionel Chouinard of Holy Trinity Church in Lisbon Falls.
“We’re dreaming,” said Chouinard, who is part of the Lewiston group. “It’s still very early, but at this point, we are not discussing closing any churches.”
Any changes will be meant to strengthen the parishes, he said.
Six years ago, his church was created from three others in Lisbon: St. Anne, Holy Family and St. Cyril and Methodius.
“You bring the talents from individual churches together,” he said.
In Rumford, leaders have spent the last two weeks going through demographic details of his local churches, Levasseur said. This week, they’ll begin examining their finances.
Any cuts would be hard, said the priest. The Rumford church and those nearby are all busy.
“We’re at capacity for two Masses on Sunday,” Levasseur said of St. Athanasius and St. John Catholic Church. In Mexico, St. Theresa also fills for its weekly Mass and services in Bethel can often balloon with people visiting the nearby ski resorts.
Before any decision will be made, he plans to talk with parishioners first.
“We’ll have a kind of town meeting,” he said.
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