Pastoral units to cope with the problem of the shortage of clergy, and the isolation of priests in rural areas: that’s the proposal that Cardinal Péter Erdö, President of the Hungarian Bishops’ Conference and since last year President of the Ccee (Council of European Bishops’ Conferences) made at the end, in Budapest of the plenary assembly of the Hungarian episcopate. According to the statistics for 2005 there are 2576 priests in Hungary to serve a population of roughly 10 million, the majority of them Catholics. But whereas in urban areas the ratio is one priest for every 6,000 faithful, in rural areas the same priest is often responsible for 5 churches in 5 different villages, often far apart. That makes it quite impossible to establish personal relations”. It’s a situation that, in the cardinal’s view, “not only poses problems of a pastoral nature, but makes these priests isolated and solitary. To avoid this condition, we in the Bishops’ Conference have tried to find a solution: that of creating structures for parishes in the countryside, formed by groups of 2-3 priests who live in a community, and together run the parishes of the territory”.
