Story Archives of 'Diocese of Manchester'

The New Hampshire Attorney General's office has released files that publicly identify 26 clergymen accused of sexual abuse.

The list comes after the close of the state's final audit of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester. During that audit, the Church had agreed to report any other accusations to the Attorney General's office and remove those accused from their jobs.

Will Delker is a Senior Assistant Attorney General. He describes the process to NHPR's Mark Bevis.

New Hampshire's Catholic Diocese has announced that three Roman Catholic parishes in Portsmouth have merged.

Saint James Church, Immaculate Conception, and Saint Catherine of Siena are now known as Corpus Christi parish.

All three churches will stay open for now, with Sunday Masses at all three.

This recent development is just the latest in a series of mergers across the Diocese.

Last Month, several churches in the Monadnock region announced they would merge, and earlier this spring three parishes in the Plymouth area decided to join together.

All this consolidation is the result of a planning process that organized the state's 117 Catholic parishes into 31 clusters.

Priests and lay people within those clusters were then given the task of deciding the best way for their churches to meet the church's goals.

Father Robert Gorski is Director of the Diocese Long Range Planning Commission.

He described the diocese situation to NHPR's Mark Bevis.

The Roman Catholic Church in New Hampshire says there's a lack of priests in the state and has organized monthly prayer services in Manchester to address the shortage. We'll explore the state of the Catholic Church in New Hampshire with a look at the challenges facing today's priests. We'll talk with Monsignor Anthony Frontiero, vocations director for the Manchester Archdiocese and Sister Maureen Sullivan, a Domincan Sister of Hope and associate professor of theology at St. Anselm College.

The National Review Board criticized Catholic bishops for failing to stop widespread clergy sex abuse over the past five decades. The watchdog panel of prominent lay leaders said the bishops? failure to stop the abuse was ?shameful to the church?. Catholic activists in New Hampshire say they?re still worried that the leadership of the Manchester Diocese isn?t taking responsibility for its role. New Hampshire Public Radio?s Raquel Maria Dillon reports.

We'll talk with reporters about the findings of the state attorney general's report which was released Monday, and how the Manchester Diocese and New Hampshire Catholics have responded to it. Laura's guests are Jason Hirsch, reporter for the Associated Press, www.ap.org; Kathryn Marchocki, reporter for The Union Leader, www.unionleader.com; and Michael Resendes, reporter for The Boston Globe, www.boston.com.