There are no priests, we need to rationalize expenses. This is why Bishop Renato Marangoni has announced the establishment of 30 pastoral collaborations, with a priest who takes care of several parishes, up to the limit of eight. The bishop wanted to announce it to the mayors and other public administrators, met the other afternoon in Belluno. To which he also anticipated that he will start the first pastoral visit. And that he will do it for pastoral collaborations.
Numerous parish priests manage three communities. Don Fabiano Del Favero is at five: Rivamonte, Tiser, Gosaldo, Voltago and Frassenè. But the record belongs to Don Roberto De Nardin, to whom the bishop entrusted all eight parishes of the Val di Zoldo. The map of partnerships will be sent to each mayor, because the reorganization also civilly involves the municipal administrations. A reorganization – the bishop clarified with the mayors – which also calls into question the responsibility, as if to say that it could happen that some parishes, especially the smaller ones, run the risk in some cases of being left without mass.
Numerous mayors attended the meeting. The meeting between the regional councilor Gianpaolo Bottacin and his catechism teacher, found again after years on the same occasion, was moving. “The communities must not be islands and the territory of the province needs to rediscover the logic of the relationship between the communities”, said Monsignor Marangoni, “I feel that we cannot read the territory”.
This is an aspect that civil and ecclesial society share: “Due to the few ministerial resources”, the bishop recalled with concern, “we will have 47 priests under seventy for 158 parishes”. This is why there will soon be thirty collaborations between parishes in the diocese and the map of these will be sent to the mayors, he announced. But the church is not lacking in resources.
On young people, Marangoni cited the 280 who every summer volunteer at the Villa Gregoriana and the San Paolo Village, but also the result of the synodal groups: “We are used to no longer asking ourselves the question that the new generations are uncomfortable with we”. He recognized the abandonment of the elderly, whenever there is an increase in the number of communities entrusted to a pastor or even that in one of the five, seven, eight parishes entrusted to a pastor, mass will no longer be celebrated every Sunday. .
Councilor Bottacin appealed to the Church to help young people recognize the boundary between good and evil, Senator Luca De Carlo hoped for the return of the speakers, Viviana Fusaro, mayor of Feltre, assured the commitment to grow youth associations. According to Giuseppe Casagrande, mayor of Pieve di Cadore, “we must not indulge in the positive. Many times Municipalities and Christian communities seem to be queues of Mexicans taking a siesta in the afternoon sun, their sombrero pulled down on their heads, waiting for no one knows who ».