Chai Brady
Bishop Donal McKeown 
On the eve of his retirement, Bishop Donal McKeown of Derry has said in future there will not be a priest in every parish and the faithful must embrace a faith sustained “by committed lay people”.
The bishop’s 75th birthday lands on April 12, when he must submit his resignation to the Pope. Reflecting on a lifetime of ministry, McKeown sees the challenges facing the Church as an opportunity for transformation.
Having led the Diocese of Derry through a time of growing secularisation, reduced Mass attendance, and evolving parish structures, Bishop McKeown told The Irish Catholic: “It’s not about defending our status or regaining what we used to have, it’s about being ministers of the Gospel. If we are faithful, we will be fruitful.”
Rather than lament the decline in clergy numbers, Bishop McKeown insisted: “We’ve been grouping parishes together, not just because of a drop in clergy numbers, but because too many parishes relied on one priest to do everything. That’s not healthy. We need to foster collegiality among clergy, build relationships with laypeople, and discern together what God is calling us to do.
“Half the world already operates this way. In Africa, in Latin America, they don’t have a priest in every parish. The faith is sustained by catechists, by committed laypeople. We need to embrace that model here,” he said.
For Bishop McKeown, the Church’s calling in this new landscape is not to seek strength, but to remain missionary. He draws on Pope Francis’s image of the Church as a field hospital: close to the wounded, not being defensive.
The bishop said: “Where there’s fear, there’s always a temptation to retreat behind walls. But Pope Francis reminds us: we are a Church on mission, not a Church at war.”
Looking at the polarisation in politics and within the Church, Bishop McKeown said the Church’s credibility will come not from its influence, but its witness. “You can be more influential from the margins sometimes than you can be in the centre of things,” he said. “And you risk being compromised if you play too much ball with powerful forces.”
Even when it comes to issues within the Church that have caused much debate and division such as around the Traditional Latin Mass, the bishop said the Church’s focus must remain clear: “We have to listen – not just to argue, but to listen with the heart. Our job is to focus on how we bring the Gospel to people.”
See pages 12-13 for full interview