St Mary’s Pro Cathedral in Dublin. A deanery meeting is to be held in Dublin diocese this week to set up a diocesan pastoral council and another special deanery meeting is planned later in the month to nominate people to the council. This comes as the diocese implements its pastoral strategic planning resource for 2025 to 2027. The structure being put in place is 197 parishes will fit into 53 parish partnerships, with the term ‘clusters’ being dropped. If a parish is no longer viable it will at least be part of bigger partnership and find resources there.
The plan is very much being guided by Fr Gareth Byrne, VG and Moderator of the Diocesan Curia and Chairperson of the strategies implementation group. In the plan’s introduction he writes: “We will pray together, reflect together, plan together for its implementation in parish and partnerships of parishes across the Archdiocese. We will need to take co-ordinated action together, encouraging and supporting each other, continually opening our hearts to renewal and new beginnings.”
Some of the objectives of the plan include a review of priestly ministry and how to be more co-responsible and how the parish would function with one priest, promotion of parish pastoral councils, grow team-based ministries in parishes and establish a funeral ministry and prepare parishes to conduct funeral liturgies in the absence of a priest.
Another Strategic Planning Resource meeting is due to take place in January.