Who says Mass at your Parish if the Pastor is away?

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SMHW

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At my parish of 2500 families but only one priest, if the pastor is away, one of the secretaries gets on the phone and starts calling other parishes, seminaries, retired priests, visiting priests, etc to find someone to fill in.

One Sunday morning, a retired priest (who lived about a 30 minute drive away) was to say the 9:00 am Mass but he overslept and didn’t show up until after 9:30. The deacons were thinking they would have to have a Communion Service.
 
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SMHW:
At my parish of 2500 families but only one priest, if the pastor is away, one of the secretaries gets on the phone and starts calling other parishes, seminaries, retired priests, visiting priests, etc to find someone to fill in.
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We have various priests in the area (from about a 1 hour circumferance) come to say mass when our priest is away. I have no idea how they find them, and I’m not sure if they are from parishes that have more than one priest or not. I don’t remember ever having a problem as you describe it, though, thank goodness.

John
 
Here in this small town in the red-neck, Bible Belt South we have only one parish, but we also have a Benedictine monastery, and then 20 miles away we have the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. I don’t think we’ll have a problem if Fr’s Kevin and John are both away at the same time 😃

I guess you could say we’re blessed.

DaveBj
 
Our parish is pretty lucky. A priest that works for the ArchDiocese resides in the rectory.

So while not assigned to the parish in any official capacity, he assists at Sunday Mass as needed (at our parish and others nearby)
 
Usually there is no problem at our parish. We are located near a seminary and have many priests who are happy to fill in.

But during the summer, priests are harder to find. The event where the priest showed up late happened when our pastor was away on vacation. (I think he was visiting family in Ireland.) The seminary priests generally take off during the summer and those that are left are in heavier than usual demand from the various surrounding parishes. (I guess their pastors are all on vacation too.)
 
2500 families and 1 priest? WOW!

My parish is twice that size and we have 4 priests, plus 1 in residence (part time). We may have up to 2 priests gone at any time. All the Masses are offered, but it can put a strain on the priests.
 
While we have two priests at our parish and a mission church we have priests from a nearby religious order come and say Mass due to the number of Masses on any given weekday. One Sunday our associate pastor was away on military service as a chaplain in Kosovo, the religious order priests were away at a big meeting for their congregation, and the priest who was supposed to have that Mass was no where to be found. My husband figured that we might have to have a Communion Service and when he went to the tabernacle to check the ciborium found that there was only 5 hosts :bigyikes: Panic started to set in, but fortunately our pastor arrived back from the mission church. Sometimes even the best plans go awry.
 
We do have 4 active permenant deacons, one retired permenant deacon, and 2 permenant deacons in training. But that doesn’t help with saying Mass.

For a while we did have an associate priest but he was transferred to another parish.
 
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deaconswife:
While we have two priests at our parish and a mission church we have priests from a nearby religious order come and say Mass due to the number of Masses on any given weekday. One Sunday our associate pastor was away on military service as a chaplain in Kosovo, the religious order priests were away at a big meeting for their congregation, and the priest who was supposed to have that Mass was no where to be found. My husband figured that we might have to have a Communion Service and when he went to the tabernacle to check the ciborium found that there was only 5 hosts :bigyikes: Panic started to set in, but fortunately our pastor arrived back from the mission church. Sometimes even the best plans go awry.
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Yikes! At least in both our cases, a priest eventually showed up. The worst that possibly happened was that the following Mass started a bit late.
 
We’re lucky in that 1) we have two priests, and 2) both of our priests are hometown boys and have a handful of priest friends who can help out with weekend Masses if one of them is on vacation. This way we always have a familiar face presiding over the Mass, and we’re always glad to see the visiting priests- many of them are in some way connected to our parish.
 
For week day Mass, our Deacon does the Liturgy of the Hour, for the weekend Masses, we have a visiting priest.

Our priest’s mother got very sick just recently and our pastor had to go tend to family matters, he was gone almost two weeks.
The Liturgy of the Hour was nice, but sure did miss Mass.
 
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