Ireland’s Catholic Church down to one priest per parish

By DONAL THORNTON
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Monday, November 16, 2009

There are barely enough priests to preach in Dublin's 199 parishes.

According to Dublin's Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who spoke about the challenges the Church faces at Dublin's Pro-Cathedral on Saturday, “We have 46 priests over 80 and only two less than 35 years of age. In a very short time we will just have the bare number of priests required to have one active priest for each of our 199 parishes."

Highlighting that an aging clergy was the biggest challenge the Church faced, he said that priests over 70 years of age outnumbered priests under 40 by 10 to one. the rest