THE Hierarchy's spokesman, Bishop Thomas Flynn, has admitted that in his Achonry diocese, which takes in parts of Roscommon, Mayo and Sligo, rural depopulation is leading to fewer Masses and fewer priests.
He was responding to a newspaper report that Sunday Mass had been withdrawn in one Roscommon village, Ballyfarnon, and Saturday evening Mass had been dropped in neighbouring Arigna because of the fall in the churchgoing population.
Bishop Flynn said that in such areas there were both fewer people and fewer priests, although the proportion of priests to people in the west of Ireland was still high by international standards.
However, he said that in his own diocese he had been forced to reduce formerly three priest parishes to two priests and two priest parishes to one.
"It's the last thing a bishop wants to We've seen the post offices close down. The school has been a centre of the parish; the Garda station has been central; and now the priest and the church - these are the last surviving centres of focus for a rural community. But you do reach a stage - and this is the one we're reaching in some parts now - where communities themselves are no longer viable."
He accepted, too, that many of the people left in such communities were elderly. Many of these were now frightened because of the recent wave of rural crime and were moving into provincial towns "where they can live in secure surroundings".
Asked if the Catholic Church would follow the Church of Ireland in closing churches and amalgamating parishes, he said it was "something one doesn't like to have to think about."
He said the one "bright light" was the plan for the west drawn up by the partnership board, which had evolved from the bishops' Developing the West Together initiative. Bishop Flynn said if this was implemented he had no doubt that the rural west could be "reinvigorated".
The ICMSA president, Mr Frank Allen, yesterday called on the Government to initiate a rural renewal scheme similar to the Urban Renewal Scheme, "which has transformed neglected sections of our towns and cities".