LONDON - Facing a drop in applicants for the priesthood, the Catholic Church said Tuesday it is considering closing half its seminaries in England.
Officials said the church is looking at the feasibility of merging its four seminaries into two after only half the training places were filled for the current academic year.
"The numbers in the seminaries have fallen and the numbers are likely to remain at about that figure," Monsignor Andrew Summersgill told a news conference Tuesday.
He said the church wanted to study "the most appropriate way to train priests in the 21st century" and there will be ongoing discussions about the future of the seminaries.
"Finance would have to be one element of that but this process is not driven by finance at all, it is about the end product, how you get good priests," said Summersgill, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.
After a discussion of the issue on Monday, conference members recommended that seminary leaders meet with their archbishops and discuss the issue with the Vatican before any decision is made.
In a statement, bishops said they were "faced with the challenges of our times and we need to recognize the possibilities for renewal and hope.
"We are increasingly aware of the diversity within our present seminary system and of the variety of needs the seminaries are required to address in the formation of priests for our dioceses," the statement continued.
The church's Commission on Seminaries has recommended that St. Cuthbert's College in Ushaw, near Durham in northeast England and St. Mary's College in Oscott, near Birmingham, central England, should merge to create one seminary for northern and central England.
St. John's Seminary in Wonersh, southern England, and Allen Hall, in southwest London should also merge to become the south of England seminary, the commission said.
Priests train for six years, at a cost of up to 80,000 pounds (dlrs 116,000 each). Some 230 men are currently undergoing training.
The four English seminaries, plus two in Rome and one in Valladolid, Spain, offer up to 500 training places for priests from England and Wales.
Summersgill said the church is considering ways to boost the number of trainee priests, but added that it is able to survive with the current low number because of its increased use of lay people in administrative roles.