Meetings are planned next month to begin deciding how to consolidate Vermont’s Catholic churches, which are facing a shortage of priests. Bishop Kenneth Angell has invited all priests, deacons and two lay representatives from each local church to discuss possible solutions at a January 15 session in Barre.
The diocese projects its priest population will drop by half in ten years, leaving about 55 clergymen to minister to the state’s 148,000 Catholics. The diocese launched a study of its current 130-parish structure last January.