CNA Staff, May 20, 2024 / 16:34 pm (CNA).
The Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, will have half as many parishes by 2026 as it does now, as part of a pastoral planning effort focused on helping the diocese “be more intentional in cultivating disciples.”
Bishop Louis Tylka announced on Saturday that between now and May 2026, the diocese will be reshaped from 156 parishes to 75 parishes, with 129 worship sites. The remaining parishes will be overseen by 71 diocesan and religious order pastors; 39 priests will be reassigned.
The Peoria Diocese covers 26 counties in Illinois. Out of a total population of 1.4 million, nearly 11% of that population is Catholic, the diocese says.
The decision to drastically downsize the diocese comes amid declining Mass attendance there as well as a prediction of a shrinking number of priests. Seventy percent of the 145 total priests ministering in the diocese are over the age of 50. According to the diocese’s projections, in the next 10 years, there may be fewer than 100 active priests.
Mass attendance shrank 22% between 2019 and 2022, the diocese says, while infant baptisms are down 27% since 2015-2016. In addition, funerals are down 10% and Catholic marriages are down 34% since 2015-2016.
In announcing the pastoral planning initiative, “Growing Disciples,” in August 2022, Tylka said he launched the plan “so that we can not only meet the ministry challenges of today, but we can also grow a vibrant, sustainable mission-driven Church for the future.”
“We must recognize that in each successive generation, we are called to read the signs of the times and, entrusting our discipleship to the Holy Spirit, discern the path forward,” Tylka said at the time.
“Looking to the landscape which surrounds us, we see that year after year, the soil is tilled, planted, nurtured, and yields good fruit … Likewise, in the Church, we must do the necessary tasks which will yield an abundant harvest for the kingdom of God.”
The diocese’s reorganization plan to greatly reduce the number of parishes is reminiscent of those undertaken in numerous others in the U.S., including much larger ones such as Chicago, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Baltimore. Many of those reorganizations — including the present one in Peoria — have been administered by the Pennsylvania-based Catholic Leadership Institute (CLI) and consist of an extensive consultation process with parishioners and Catholic leaders.
The Peoria Diocese has become well known as the home diocese of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, a renowned 20th-century Catholic bishop and televangelist whose sainthood cause has progressed in recent years. Sheen was ordained and first served as a priest in the Peoria Diocese.
After three years of legal battles, in 2019 the Archdiocese of New York, where Sheen was buried after his death in 1979, released Sheen’s body to the Diocese of Peoria, where he is now buried.
Tylka said the pastoral planning process aims to incorporate the “five foundations” outlined in his message for Easter 2022 — evangelization, the Eucharist, discipleship, vocations, and the legacy of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
The Peoria diocese has been poorly run for decades. What they fail to realize is that people in small towns will not travel 15 to 20 miles to a new parish. Many church goers are senior citizens and rarely if ever leave town for anything. They will either stop going to church completely or attend another local Christian church. Peoria is going to lose a very high percentage of donations with this move.
John,
We made the suggestion that our parish buy buses to transport folks. It seemed ridiculous to others. You
are right that many cannot travel the distance to Mass
when the churches close. Small towns and worshiping
together in them is a culture being ignored by Catholic Leadership
Kathleen, you are so right in that small parishes are being ignored. Our parish communities are “family” and like many small churches in our Diocese here in Minnesota, we have become an Oratory. We are small farming communities in this Diocese, and our parishioners are older-it makes it difficult for them to drive somewhere-Some of our older members are not attending mass, have chosen not to join the church that we were told our membership would be transferred to, and our small community feels the impact of a church closure. It has angered many people, to the point they don’t want to go to church because of what has happened-they feel abandoned by the Catholic Church.
Or watch Mass on TV/Youtube – Fr Mike Schmitz among others became a popular way to “attend” Mass during the COVID shutdown. And for many senior citizens (and I suspect even younger families) have opted to watch on TV.
Novus Ordo parishes are dying out left and right. My local parish is walking distance from my house. The average age of the dwindling Mass goer (down to about 40 people) is about 70 with a standard deviation of about 5 years.
I attend a TLM that is about 60 miles away where the attendence is so high, they have five Masses on Sunday and the average age of the Mass goer is about 35 with a standard deviation of about 35 years (there are as many infants as there are octogenarians).