A Catholic crisis: Why priests in Ireland are fading into history and not being replaced

In Ireland, where religion has played such a big place in its past, for better or for worse, fewer and fewer people are attending mass on Sunday, and even less are willing to commit themselves to the sanctified life of a priest.

This, among other reasons, is leading these men of God to work well past retirement age while still trying to cover the work of churches all over the country.

According to a survey conducted by the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) last year, 15% of priests are over 75 and still working, over 25% are aged between 60–75, and just 2.5% of serving Catholic priests in Ireland, meanwhile, are under 40.

“What we see now is priests in their mid to late seventies trying to run three parishes”, Father Tony Flannery, a now 76-year-old retired priest from county Galway and founding member of the ACP tells Euronews.

“And there is nobody coming after them”, he adds. The amount of clergymen retiring is surpassing the number of young people committing to the priesthood.

This year, only 20 seminarians are studying to become Catholic priests for Ireland’s 26 dioceses at the national seminary in Maynooth. Weekly Mass attendance, which stood at 91% in 1975, was down to 36% in 2016 according to figures from the Irish census.

According to Father Flannery, the sexual abuse scandal surrounding the church is one of the main factors driving people away from religion, but also the fact that the institution is not aligned with modern-day society.

“It’s hard enough getting young people to go to mass, and even more so when it is conducted by an 85-year-old”, he tells Euronews over the phone while remembering a recent church event.

Coming up to Christmas, he explains that the world has become more “consumerist and materialistic”