Parish (Catholic Church) - Merger and Suppression

Merger and Suppression

Bishops may close parishes through two legal mechanisms under canon law. Under suppression, the identity of one parish is abolished, and its former congregants are joined to one or more extant parishes and take on their identity. In a merger, the identity of two or more parishes are abolished, and their former congregants organized into a new parish, and take on its identity. Because a parish is a community of people and not simply a legal entity, canonical suppression is in practice a form of merger, as Dario Castrillón Hoyos of the Congregation for the Clergy notes in a 2006 letter to Bishop William S. Skylstad, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:

nly with great difficulty can one say that a parish becomes extinct. A parish is extinguished by the law itself only if no Catholic community any longer exists in its territory, or if no pastoral activity has taken place for a hundred years (can. 120 #1). When a parish is "suppressed" by competent authority, in reality, the still existing community of Christ's faithful is actually "merged" into the neighboring community of Christ's faithful and constitutes a larger community, and the territory of the extinguished parish is added to the other, forming a larger territorial unit.

Parishes are typically suppressed or merged when they become unsustainable due to a decline in the local Catholic population. For example, given the ongoing priest shortage, a bishop may wish to reallocate clergy serving a small parish so that they can help serve a larger one, or a decline in contributions may make upkeep of a large, old parish church economically impossible. The merger or suppression of a parish does not necessarily require that its parish church or other operations be closed, however. The former parish church may be retained as an alternative worship space, for example, or converted for other pastoral use.