Churches to learn fate Jan. 31

Recorded messages by the Diocese of Scranton bishop will be played at Masses announcing closings

SCRANTON – Diocese of Scranton Catholics will learn the fate of their churches via a recorded message from Bishop Joseph Martino played at each Mass the weekend of Jan. 31, according to an article in The Catholic Light, the diocesan newspaper.

The move is a sharp departure from the last similar announcement, when Martino revealed the closing of numerous schools during a live press conference at the Diocesan Guild building in Scranton in January 2008. That event was televised throughout the region, and students watching at Bishop Hafey High School sobbed and screamed when they learned their school would be closed. Those images headlined local news broadcasts that evening.

The church closing announcement will be made at each Mass before being released to the general public on the diocesan Web site. The Catholic Light article says the recording will include introductory remarks followed by the restructuring plan for the cluster to which that particular church belongs. There are 50 clusters in the 11-county diocese.

That suggests people may not know the impact on all churches until the posting at www.dioceseofscranton.org.

The results will be published in the Feb. 5 Catholic Light, but a separate article in Thursday’s edition noted that fewer people will get the paper delivered to their door. In an ongoing effort to curb costs, the diocese is pruning the list of those who receive the paper by mail.

That article says circulation is primarily based on parish quotas and mailing lists that were developed many years ago, and that some of those lists are outdated.

Now, the tri-weekly paper will be mailed for free only to those who contribute to the Diocesan Annual Appeal. Others on a parish list who did not donate to the appeal can subscribe for $10 per year.

The Catholic Light will also switch from a broadsheet format (the type The Times Leader uses) to a tabloid format akin to this newspaper’s Friday Guide insert.

The Jan 31 announcement is the culmination of a process Martino dubbed, “Called to Holiness and Mission,” which began in January 2008 that involved the formation of teams at each parish and “cluster teams” among several parishes in the same area. Those teams made recommendations to a central planning commission.

The commission released preliminary recommendations in November which, if followed, would close about 37 churches in Luzerne County. Those recommendations were made before the diocese completed a study of the structural condition of the churches, which will be included in the final decision made by Martino.

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Church Closings

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