CATH NEWS REPORT- From a peak of one priest for every 518 Catholics in 1966, there is now one for every 1895 Catholics - if retired priests and those not in parish ministry are included, according to a new analysis of parish ministry reported in The Age.
The report, Catholic Parish Ministry in Australia: Facing Disaster?, is a statistical analysis by former priest Peter Wilkinson, a senior research fellow at the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs on behalf of an active lay group, Catholics for Ministry.
In New South Wales in 15 years, it could be one priest for as many as 22,000 Catholics, one for every 13,000 in Victoria.
The huge decline in parish priests - which will intensify as the boom clerical generation ordained between 1955 and 1975 retires or dies - comes as the Catholic population is rising rapidly, largely due to immigration, the Age adds.In 2010, based on Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, the Catholic population was 5.6 million, up 470,000 from the 2006 Census.
Already one in four Australian parishes is without a full-time priest. The Australian bishops - banned by Rome from even mentioning the possibility of married priests or women priests - are trying to meet the challenge by merging parishes and recruiting priests from overseas, often on short-term arrangements - a strategy, according to Dr Wilkinson, ''of despair and desperation''.
Since 1994 184 parishes have merged. Today 1282 Australian parishes have 1523 priests but by 2025, the report says, there may be as few as 600 home-grown priests for a Catholic population estimated to top seven million.
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