Like many Irish dioceses, the diocese of Cloyne is facing a significant shortage of priests over the coming months and years ahead.<\/p>\n
According to a recent survey conducted by the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), 15% of priests in Ireland are aged over 75 and still working, over 25% are aged between 60\u201375, with just 2.5% of serving Catholic priests in Ireland are aged under 40.<\/p>\n
Bishop of Cloyne William Crean told The Echo about the steps that the diocese is taking to deal with the current situation regarding the shortage of priests.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been involved in a process here, like a lot of other dioceses, where we have a lesser number of priests.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cSo, we are looking at how we can organise ourselves in parishes or groups of parishes in the best way possible to serve the pastoral needs going forward.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been involved both at deanery level and parish level with those kinds of conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI must say that it leaves us with lots of questions wondering how things are. But we are getting a strong sense of solidarity and support.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are keen that the life in their parishes is sustained and supported regardless of how a different church is emerging at this time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On what his hopes are for the coming year ahead for the church and across the world globally, Bishop Crean added: \u201cThe jubilee of hope carries within it the very thought and very concept of a new beginning always.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor 2026, there are lots of worrying things by way of war and conflict universally.<\/p>\n
\n “But we have a great hope that comes from people who are trying to make peace in these situations.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cThe international politics, we would like a little more calm and level headed people to prevail.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like many Irish dioceses, the diocese of Cloyne is facing a significant shortage of priests over the coming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,12785],"class_list":["post-208164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}