The panel will be charged with determining the future of the church.

PORTLAND (AP) – The new leader of Maine’s 234,000 Roman Catholics has placed a moratorium on major capital improvements until a committee is set up to establish a plan for realigning and reinvigorating parishes.

Bishop Richard J. Malone met this week with clergy, lay parish coordinators and deacon candidates on Tuesday in Scarborough and on Wednesday in Bangor to ask for guidance in setting up the committee.

The committee will draft a plan that recognizes driving forces affecting the church’s ministry.

Those include population shifts within the state and a decline in number of active priests, Malone said.

The membership of the committee will be announced June 10 and the panel’s proposal will be due in January.

“This whole thing is mission-driven,” Sue Bernard, spokeswoman for the Portland Diocese of Portland, said Friday. “We’re making a change because the mission has to be paramount.”

A study has estimated that the number of active priests, currently about 100, will drop to 65 or so by 2010. There are 135 parishes and 44 ministries across the state, Bernard said.

At the same time, the state’s population has been shifting. Some parishes are too small to support a full-time priest, while other parishes have outgrown their churches, according to the study.

Bernard said some changes may be implemented next year, but the most of the goals will be longer in range.

“This is going to be a long-range plan. We’re talking about a seven- to ten-year plan,” Bernard said.

As for the moratorium, it applies only to new construction and renovations. Any work that is currently under way, or work necessary for safety reasons, will be allowed to continue, she said.

Malone took on his pastoral duties during an installation ceremony on March 31 in Portland. He succeeded Bishop Joseph Gerry, who has returned to St. Anselm monastery in Manchester, N.H.

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