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CV NEWS FEED // The Diocese of Joliet, Illinois, will likely close or merge 19 parishes as it faces a major restructuring due to financial issues, closely following a smaller closure of five churches and two schools earlier this year.
The Chicago Sun Times reported that Bishop Ronald A. Hicks’ office also cited a lack of priests as reasons for restructuring the Diocese, but added that it was unclear how much the Diocese’s payments to settle clergy sex abuse lawsuits are affecting its financial status.
According to a statement received by the Chicago Sun Times, Bishop Hicks’ aide, Maureen Harton, said that the Diocese is currently moving towards the third phase of its reconstruction.
“Parishioners’ connections to their parishes are both spiritual and emotional,” she said. “However, change is inevitable and necessary to adapt to trends and circumstances that are happening in our diocese, in the United States and in the universal church.
“As we approach the third phase in this restructuring process, the hope is that by pruning some of the branches, we as a diocese can continue to thrive and grow,” she added.
The Diocese of Joliet is not the only one evaluating closures or mergers; as CatholicVote previously reported, several dioceses across the United States and in Germany have faced major setbacks that have led to their own restructuring processes.
Bishop Hicks was installed in the Diocese of Joliet in 2021, and he immediately began looking into a diocesan reconstruction. According to his 2022 statement explaining the restructuring process, he was “immediately inundated with statistics of too few pastors to cover too many parishes, especially as we project the numbers into the near future.”
“I was also confronted with declining Mass attendance and budgetary issues, all exacerbated by the pandemic,” he added.
Bishop Hicks laid out his reasons for restructuring, saying:
We are a great diocese filled with amazing laity, religious and priests. We are experiencing so much success implementing my vision of catechesis, evangelization and faith into action. Why, then, am I leading us into this targeted restructuring? It is because most of us want to see a Church that is focused on the mission of Jesus Christ and not on the preservation of our buildings. As missionary disciples, we should all desire a Church that is thriving, growing and following the Gospel. In other words, everything we do as a Church needs to be about the salvation of souls.
At the end of the day, I do not want us to be viewed as a diocese that buried its head in the sand or kicked the can down the road. Instead, with deep faith in God, we need to prune some of the structural branches, so that our Church can continue to produce great fruit.
