Southern Pastoral Ministry Map Highlights Mission Need

Catholic ministry fails to keep up with increasing number of southern Catholics

The new map, “Status of Catholic Pastoral Ministry in the Southern United States, 2000,” is the first in a series of maps which will update a similar Glenmary map published in 1988. This map provides one way of assessing “greatest missionary need,” says Ken Sanchagrin, director of the Glenmary Research Center.

Between 1990 and 2000, the U.S. population grew by 17 percent in the South. Catholic population growth was almost double that at 30 percent. In spite of that dramatic increase in the number of Catholics, there was a net increase of only 34 Catholic congregations in the entire South, with three-quarters of those new congregations in Florida, Ken Sanchagrin reports.

The new Glenmary Research Center map shows that 173 of the 1,425 counties in the South (12.1 percent) have no canonically established Catholic congregation. This compares to 1988 when 155 of 1,405 counties (11 percent) were without a formal Catholic community. In 2000, 196 counties (13.8 percent) were without a resident pastoral leader appointed by the bishop. This compares to 1988 when 202 Catholic communities (14.4 percent) were without an official resident pastoral leader.

These numbers lead Ken Sanchagrin to two conclusions: First, there has been significant growth in the Catholic population but no accompanying increase in the number of parishes or resident pastoral leaders. Second, the most neglected areas of the South remain small towns and rural areas—especially southern Georgia, northeastern North Carolina, middle Tennessee, a large part of Arkansas and northern Louisiana, as well as rural Virginia and parts of Oklahoma.

Future Glenmary Research Center maps, says Ken Sanchagrin, will delineate the number of southern Catholic communities for which there is an official but nonresident pastoral leader; the number of pastoral leaders who are priests, deacons, male or female religious, or lay persons; and the geographical distribution of various types of pastoral leaders throughout the South.

To order this new map.