A Belfast parish is seeking to appoint a 'parish manager' to free up priests for exclusively pastoral duties.
St Oliver Plunkett Parish in Lenadoon in the west of the city has decided to appoint a person who would take responsibility for the financial and other practical needs of the local parish community.
Parish Priest Fr Martin Magill said the role of a priest had changed considerably during the past ten years and he had found ''that an increasing amount of my time has been taken up at the desk''.
The role of the parish manager will be to administer and provide day-to-say supervision of the financial and temporal affairs of the parish, to allow the parish priest to concentrate on the spiritual affairs of the parish.
Representing
The manager's role will involve coordinating and facilitating the administrative affairs of the parish, engaging with the community and representing and promoting the parish externally.
''We are explicit about their purpose. Their purpose is to free up the priest of the parish to allow them to concentrate on the pastoral and spiritual needs of the parish community,'' according to Fr Magill.
''At present Down & Connor facilitators are listening to parishioners' concerns and even at an early stage one of the concerns is that priests are taken up with administration. We hope this will be some way to alleviating the burden on clergy,'' Fr Magill said.
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