A SHORTAGE of priests has led to a weekly mass being cancelled at Darlington’s main town centre Catholic church.

Due to the ill health of one priest, and there being no spare priests in the area, the 11am mass has been cancelled at St Augustine’s in Darlington for the foreseeable future.

The congregation will still be served by two other Sunday masses, at 9.15am and 6.30pm.

In the latest St Augustine’s parish bulletin, it said the absence of Father Seamus Doyle due to illness “creates a new situation which affects parishes and remaining clergy in Darlington.

“Bishop Seamus Cunningham and Father Jeff Dodds have confirmed the bottom line: there are no spare priests to fill in at St Augustune’s,” it said.

Darlington dean, Father David Russell, has taken over temporarily at St Augustines, and it was hoped Father Seamus would be back to full health soon.

Monsignor Andrew Faley, spokesman for the diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, said the number of priests in the diocese had declined in the last 20 or 30 years.

“Priests are so thinly spread now, any illness or other cause for them to be unable to perform their duties means there is a gap which the bishop recognises and responds to immediately, as he did in this case.

“This is a temporary situation until the priest gets better and he is able to return to his full duties.”

He said the diocese as a whole had embarked on a three-year programme, called Forward Together, to free priests up to concentrate on their “pastoral and sacramental” duties.

“What it means is that we ask some of the lay people in the parishes, as some have done for years, to look to maintaining and running of the parishes in order to free the priests up for their primary duties, so they are not doing the books, or being a caretaker, or fixing the plumbing, all the time, but carrying out their most important duties.

“It is also recognising that the way forward isn’t just about replacing priests, but about lay people taking responsibilities forward for the church in the future.”

Catholicism in most countries in the developed world is facing an ageing priesthood and a decline in numbers both of priests and congregations. Europe as a whole has seen at least a 32 per cent decline in the last 30 years.