Our diocesan newspaper ran a story this past Sunday about four parish situations in which "change is in the air." One has three parishes served by one pastor and one parochial vicar, in the Brookline neighborhood of the city of Pittsburgh. Father Jim Bachner is pastor and Father Gary Oehmler is parochial vicar. One has two priests voluntarily sharing a rectory in Washington County. Father Mike Zavage is pastor of two parishes and chaplain to the large campus of California University of Pennsylvania. Father Ed Yuhas is pastor of two parishes. One has one pastor in one parish, Father Steve Kresak, but only after several parish mergers and church closings over the past twenty years in the city of McKeesport.
And one of those is our own situation in New Castle. Three priests serve four parishes in the city of New Castle. We live under one roof together, yet we serve in four parishes. I am canonically pastor of all four communities.
If you had told me when I was ordained 35 years ago that there would be situations where a pastor was in charge of two parishes, three parishes, four parishes, I would have said you were nuts--or asked what you were smoking. Maybe, maybe, I might have allowed that such situations happened in "mission areas" of the world (Peru, Bolivia, Nigeria, the Pacific Islands) or of our country (Texas, Alaska, Wyoming). But no, not in western Pennsylvania.
Yet I have been there, done that: pastor of one parish with one church; of one parish with two churches; of one parish with three churches; of one parish with four churches; of two parishes (twice); of three parishes; of four parishes. And many of my brothers in our diocese have been and are doing the same. There was a moment in the 2002 when three of my classmates and I were each pastor with four church buildings. That's right--four parishes, four pastors; 16 church buildings.
Check out the story in the February 14, 2014, edition of the Pittsburgh Catholic by Chuck Moody, "Shared concerns: Parish changes in retrospect." www.pittsburghcatholic.org
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