Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh priest reassignments take place
Mike Jones/Observer-Reporter
The Rev. Al McGinnis works Monday afternoon to organize his new rectory office at St. Ann in Waynesburg after being named the administrator of Greene County’s church grouping.
The Rev. William Feeney served as pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish for 17 years.
A feast day in the Roman Catholic church Monday honored a Spanish saint who lived through great turmoil in her denomination.
The Feast of St. Terese of Avila, who witnessed the Reformation in the 16th century, drew parallels to today’s church as widespread priest reassignments went into effect that day in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
“We’re going through change now. Change is here,” the Rev. George Chortos said when he celebrated Mass Monday at Immaculate Conception Church in Washington.
The reassignments are as a result of a dwindling number of priests and active Catholics and part of the move to place 188 parishes into 57 groupings.
The diocese had 260 active priests in 2010, a number that has dropped to 178 now, diocesan spokesman Bob DeWitt said. While the diocese had 632,138 registered Catholics two years ago, the number of people who attended Mass that year was 138,888, he said.
The reassignments came on the heels of Pope Francis on Friday accepting the resignation of Pittsburgh native Donald Wuerl as archbishop of Washington, D.C. Wuerl had come under public scrutiny for his handling of complaints about abusive priests when he served as Pittsburgh bishop.
The church is still dealing with fallout from a state grand jury report in August that identified 301 predator priests in Pennsylvania over several decades, including 99 in the Pittsburgh diocese.
The Rev. John M. Bauer, who served in Greene County, is among the latest priests to be accused of misconduct.
Bauer has been on administrative leave since Aug. 31 after the diocese received a tip alleging improper conduct. A diocese spokesman said church officials forwarded the tip to the Washington County district attorney’s office, and a diocesan independent review board will eventually decide Bauer’s standing as a priest.
Greene County parishioners will see changes under the priest reassignments. There are eight churches under five parishes that will now be within one administrative grouping in Greene.
The Rev. Al McGinnis, who served as pastor at St. Ann in Waynesburg from 1989 until 2001, returned Sunday to begin his work as the grouping administrator. Greene County now has two priests – McGinnis and the Rev. Francis Frazer – and two deacons to oversee the churches.
“We need to start seeing ourselves as a grouping of parishes and looking to a point where we can bring them all together into one administrative parish,” McGinnis said Monday said while organizing his rectory office. “But you still have all of these parishes out there. We need to make administrative tasks that we can handle and bring all of these strings together.”
The five parishes are: St. Thomas, which has churches in Clarksville and Jefferson; St. Hugh in Carmichaels; Our Lady of Consolation, which has churches in Rices Landing, Nemacolin and Crucible; St. Ignatius in Bobtown; and St. Ann in Waynesburg. However, McGinnis pointed out that some churches are not in a condition to hold mass or are losing membership. He noted that the only available church in Our Lady of Consolation Parish is Sacred Heart in Rices Landing, while St. Marcellus in Jefferson is experiencing issues with its roof.
“We need to assess what is most important for the Catholic church in Greene County to continue,” he said. “There are some churches that are in pretty bad situations, architecturally, that need a lot of work and don’t have the money.”
McGinnis said some churches will have to eventually close and the entire grouping will likely be combined into one “administrative parish.” However, he added that the remaining churches will keep their individual characteristics.
“It’s a lot of running around and trying to be there for the people and guide them through this whole process,” he said.
Immaculate Conception has been placed into a grouping with St. Hilary Church, also in Washington, and Sacred Heart Church in Claysville.
That grouping has four new priests, Michael John Lynam, Michael P. Conway, Michael R. Peck and Okechukwu Camillus Njoku. The Rev. William P. Feeney, who served Immaculate Conception for 17 years, retired Monday and will serve as chaplain at Little Sisters of the Poor in Pittsburgh.
Three parishes in the Mon Valley have been moved into one grouping and have two new priests. The Revs. Kevin J. Dominik and Patrick C. Barkey will divide up their time between Mary, Mother of the Church in Charleroi, Our Lady of the Valley Church in Donora and St. Damien of Molokai Church in Monongahela.
The changes fall under the diocese initiative named On Mission for the Church Alive, which is designed to promote health growth and shift the focus “from maintenance into ministry and mission,” said the Rev. Nicholas Vaskov, a diocesan spokesman.
“As Bishop David Zubik wrote to parishioners last April, we need to share and mobilize our resources to draw people deeper into the faith, seek the lost and serve those in need,” Vaskov said.
Chortos said the Roman Catholic church came back stronger after St. Therese’s time, in which Martin Luther’s beliefs created a great schism in Christianity.
He said the priest reassignments will result in them having more involvement in different communities rather than working alone in one parish.
“This is good. It will bring us together,” Chortos said.
For more information on parish groupings, visit diopitt.org/