Bishop Lovignana: “it is not a functionalization of personnel, but the identification of communities that can work together”
The Diocese of Aosta is preparing to put into practice the reorganization of the parishes in the area. A path made obligatory by several factors: on the one hand the constant reduction in the number of faithful, on the other the increase in the average age of religious and the chronic decline in vocations.
The situation of the Aosta Valley is no different from that of many other realities. Priests are aging and there is a lack of generational change. The new “calls” are too few, and so the religious find themselves having to manage, in old age, several parishes, even distant from each other and with a few dozen faithful who meet for the main holidays.
The point of the situation was made by the bishop, Msgr. Franco Lovignana, presenting today the beginning of the new pastoral year and the letter entitled “Come virgulti d’Ulivo around your Mass”. The Diocese “intends to institutionalize the mergers of already existing parishes in an organic way and to propose others”, he explained. The project is to unite the parishes of the same municipality to concentrate energies and the faithful by taking advantage of the “increased mobility of people”. Only Aosta will be excluded from the merger process while sharing the same problems as the rest of the Aosta Valley.
The next steps of the reorganization will be entrusted by the diocesan assembly and to the bishop. The first will be called, in the autumn, to approve the guidelines, the second will deal with “the organization of the Diocese, the distribution of the clergy and the presence of other ministries in the future”.
We must not speak of the “functionalization of the personnel”, the bishop specified, but of “the identification of communities that can work together, not turned in on themselves, sharing a journey of faith and charity”.
Clara Rossi
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