GRAND RAPIDS (MO)
MLive.com
By Heidi Fenton | hfenton@mlive.com
GRAND RAPIDS, MI — The Grand Rapids Diocese today will formally release what leaders are referring to as a “roadmap for the future”—a plan that calls for a dramatic restructuring of parishes across West Michigan through mergers, clusters, and the closing of three Grand Rapids-area churches.
The “Our Faith, Our Future” plan is nearly three years in the making and involved consultation with priests from all nine deaneries of the diocese, and parish lay members.
Bishop Walter A. Hurley gave his approval April 5.
“We knew we were faced with fewer priests. We knew that in parishes, finances were stretched. We knew that we had a lot of aging facilities that had to be addressed in one way or another,” Hurley said on Wednesday, a day before church leaders were to publicly release the plan. “We’ve completed the study. Now we’re ready to move forward using this as a roadmap for the future.”
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