Research shows that more than a third of Irish Catholic priests are over the age of 60, with 2,100 of them serving in around 2,500 parishes across the country.
Newsroom (09/12/2023 10:07, Gaudium Press) The Catholic Church in Northern Ireland has appointed lay funeral ministers due to a shortage of priests.
Funerals are the set of rites and prayers with which the Christian community accompanies its dead and commends them to God. The Church’s catechism recommends that there should be three types of celebration, corresponding to the three places in which they take place: the home of the faithful, the church and the cemetery. And it includes four main moments: the welcoming of the community, the liturgy of the Word, the Eucharistic Sacrifice (Mass), the farewell (to God) to the deceased, which is their “commendation to God” by the Church. Thus, these lay ministers will be able to carry out 3 of these functions, but the main one, the Mass, will be missing.
“Unfortunately, there may be far fewer funeral Masses in the future, because we won’t have the priests to say them. The celebration of the requiem mass for each person as part of the funeral will no longer be the norm,” said Fr. Roy Donovan, parish priest of Caherconlish-Caherline in County Limerick, Ireland.
This issue gained prominence after the Bishop of Galway and Clonfert, Bishop Michael Duignan, stated that his diocese of more than 40 parishes would have only 20 priests in the next decade.
In fact, a 2022 survey carried out by the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) pointed out that more than a third of Irish Catholic priests were over the age of 60, with only 2,100 priests working in 2,500 parishes. ACP also reported to The Irish Times that there was currently only one seminarian studying in the entire Archdiocese of Dublin.
Roy Donovan also stated that “funeral postponements are going to happen more and more. The weekend Mass is already being said in many parishes on Thursdays or Fridays”. In the UK, funerals are scheduled by the week rather than by the day.
Several dioceses – including Dublin, the country’s largest – have already introduced training programs for parishioners to relieve overburdened priests from taking charge of funerals.
Bishop Donal McKeown, who is at the head of the Diocese of Derry and Apostolic Administrator of Down and Connor, wrote a pastoral letter explaining that the decrease in the number of young men entering the priesthood makes it difficult to meet the requests of the faithful. There are currently 84 active priests working in 86 parishes and 146 churches. Furthermore, with only seven priests in the diocese under the age of 40, the number of priests in active ministry will fall by almost 50% in just over 10 years.
As a result, more than 70 new lay ministers in the two dioceses of Clogher and Down and Connor are due to finish their training in the coming months and conduct funerals in parishes in the two regions.
Fortunately, many dioceses benefit from the support of elderly priests who still celebrate Mass. Among them is 88-year-old Fr. John McKenna, who celebrates Mass every day. As he said in an interview with a journalist: “I would never stop celebrating Holy Mass”. Despite his age, Fr. McKenna has no intention of giving up his daily work in the parish. “It’s part of the calling,” he explains, adding that he would be “very unhappy” if the time came when he could no longer celebrate Mass.
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