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Parish ‘priest swap’ well received
archived from: 2009-04-06
by: Chuck Moody, Associate Editor

South Pittsburgh parish cluster tries to strengthen ties to one another By CHUCK MOODY Associate Editor In what was billed as “pulpit sharing” or “priest swap,” the priests from five parishes in two South Pittsburgh neighborhoods visited nearby parishes to celebrate weekend Masses during the first weeks of Lent.

Father Jim Bachner, pastor of St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Beechview, said the reason for the exchange was twofold.

“It’s for us priests to try to get to know each other’s parishes and people in the parishes,” Father Bachner said. “That’s first and foremost. And for the people to get to know us so that we’re familiar with each other. The other purpose was because we’re trying to do more things as a cluster.”

In addition to St. Catherine, the other parishes involved were St. Pamphilus in Beechview, and Our Lady of Loreto, Resurrection and St. Pius X, all in Brookline.

“St. Pamphilus just had a parish mission,” Father Bachner said. “When we’re doing parish missions, we’re trying to do that more and more as a cluster, inviting all the cluster parishes to attend that mission together. Not to say, ‘It’s only St. Pamphilus who’s attending this thing.’ We want to try to include everybody to be able to attend those things.

“I feel if the priests are willing to go to these other parishes as well, that we should hopefully set an example for the parishioners to say, ‘It’s not so bad going to these other parishes.’ We should feel comfortable in other parishes as well, that we’re one community in a sense trying to work more together as a larger community.”

The five parishes are in the same “cluster,” which resulted from the diocese’s Envisioning Ministry for the Future program.

One of the purposes of Envisioning Ministry is to design and configure parishes in such a way that with fewer priests there will not be less ministry. As part of the program, parishes throughout the diocese have convened in groups called clusters to share their individual plans and identify areas for inter-parish cooperation.

“Envisioning ministry, that’s what it came out of,” Father Bachner said about the pulpit exchange. “When we were first meeting, the four priests were meeting together. Eventually, we thought we better get more laity involved in the group.

“We’ve had several missions so far. I wasn’t able to make it to (St.) Pamphilus. It’s the first one that I’ve missed. I did make it to the one at St. Pius last year and the one at Ressi (Resurrection) the time before that. It’s usually like four or five days long, and I usually make it to two or three nights if I can. I’ve seen a number of people from the various parishes, so it’s good to see that. I’d say it’s been fair but not perfect. I’d say we’re moving in a good direction, but I’m hoping that it can move even better.”

The five parishes also have formed a cluster pastoral council, Father Bachner said.

“We meet like every other month,” he said. “There’s two representatives from each parish. We’re hoping to do like maybe a town hall meeting at some point. There’s some things that we’re gearing up for, but we want to make sure that we’re prepared before we do anything.

“We’ve been doing little things. Like one thing that came out of the meeting was to visit each other’s churches during Christmas. I don’t think that was well-attended. But I did see some people. I went to each church to see. It was kind of neat. Like Our Lady of Loreto has the same Nativity scene as our’s. Their’s is a little bit smaller figurines, but it’s the same figures. Just to see the different ways people decorate for Christmas.”

The parishes publish Mass and confession schedules for all of the cluster parishes in their bulletins, and they inserted a pamphlet of all of the planned Lenten activities.

“In our bulletin every week we usually have a ‘cluster corner’ now, and we’ll put events so that people know ahead of time they can go to any one of these parishes at the times that are there so they can fit it around their own schedule,” Father Bachner said.

Parishioners also can drop their collection envelopes at any of the five parishes when they attend a weekend Mass, and the envelopes will be sent to the home parish.

Father Frank Mitolo, pastor of Resurrection Parish, said the parishes do cooperate well together.

“We started out in Brookline with cooperation between the three of us, and then we expanded out to the whole cluster once that was established,” Father Mitolo said. “We get along all very well. The priests, we meet about every two or three months just to have dinner together.

“Now that we formed this cluster pastoral council, they meet every two months. It’s a great group, it works together well and they seem enthusiastic about trying to find ways to cooperate and work together so we don’t have to duplicate services in each parish.”

The exchange of priests seemed to go well, Father Mitolo said.

“I got very good feedback wherever I went,” he said.

Franciscan Father Alexis Anania, pastor of St. Pamphilus, had only been to one other parish, Resurrection, when he was contacted for this story.

“I was very happy with where I went,” Father Alexis said. “You meet people that you didn’t know. They belong to our cluster. They seemed to be happy with the idea, at least the one I went to.”

Father Alexis agreed there is a lot of cooperation between the cluster parishes.

“Planning retreats,” he said. “Our confessions we hold together as a group. Our RCIA program is all together. I think we do an awful lot. All in all, it’s a good situation.”

Father Bob Miller, pastor of Our Lady of Loreto and St. Pius X, wrote in the parish bulletins after the first weeks of the exchange that “the ‘pulpit swap’ is both exciting and strange.”

“I think it’s a great idea and can do a lot of good in laying deeper foundations of cooperation and shared ministry amongst our local parishes,” Father Bob wrote. “It’s odd, though, not to be seeing my parishioners.”

One of the things being talked about is each parish having a basketball team to play against each other.

“Building church,” Father Mitolo said. “We’re bigger than our own parish boundaries.”

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