By Dan Horn
and Denise Smith Amos
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Rev. Leonard Fecko loves talking to the children of St. Margaret of Cortona in Madisonville - in between sermons, visiting sick parishioners and raising money to keep his two parishes and a struggling school alive.
(Craig Ruttle photo)
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The Rev. Leonard Fecko lights a candle in his room at St. Margaret of Cortona Church and begins to pray.
It's a familiar prayer, the same one the Madisonville priest says every night when he returns home after another 12- or 14-hour day. He prays for guidance and strength, but mostly, he prays for more time to do his job.
Time to prepare his sermons. Time to visit sick parishioners. Time to raise enough money to keep his two Catholic parishes and a struggling school alive.
Time to be the priest he set out to be when he graduated from seminary 20 years ago.
"Help me," Fecko beseeches, a Bible open before him, "to make the best decisions I can make."
A severe shortage of priests is straining both the faithful and the fathers. In Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, some priests have more responsibilities and parishioners than at any time in 50 years.
In just three decades, the number of priests in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati has fallen from 466 to 291 - and only 205 of those are active. The archdiocese predicts that just 100 priests will be left by the end of the decade, in one of the most heavily Catholic regions of the country.
At the same time, the average age of Cincinnati priests is 61; none is younger than 30.
"I'm doing my best," says Fecko, 51, a former social worker. "But it's frustrating. You can't always be there when people want you to be there."
The time crunch for Fecko began two years ago when his job as pastor of St. Margaret's expanded to include St. John Vianney Church a few miles away. He's now responsible for both parishes, an elementary school, budgets totaling $1 million and the spiritual needs of 625 Catholic families.
Fecko is not the busiest priest in the archdiocese. But as his schedule becomes increasingly crowded, he senses he's losing the personal connection to the people who look to him for spiritual guidance.
He's not alone.
"How does an individual priest feel he's anything but a vending machine for the sacraments? How does he relate in a personal way to individuals when he's administering four parishes?" says Sister Christine Schenk, director of the Catholic reform group FutureChurch.
A heavier workload
Father Fecko smiles as the grade-school children bound up the steps at St. Margaret's and rush to his side. It's early February and they're here to learn how to be servers at the weekend Mass.
"OK," he says, "why don't we run through this so you're ready."
He shows them where to find the Bible, which he calls "the big book," and explains when they should bring him the bread and wine for Communion. "We only carry one thing in each arm," he cautions them. "We don't go clanking things."
This, he says, is one reason he decided to become a priest. Like many, he entered seminary because he enjoyed working with people and wanted to share his faith.
But lately the job has felt more like, well, a job. Since taking over as pastor of both St. Margaret's and St. John's, Fecko has spent more time on administrative issues, and less on the pastoral work he enjoys most.
He's among a growing chorus of concerned priests. A Los Angeles Times poll in 2002 found that priests rated the shortage as their biggest problem, putting it ahead of the clergy sex-abuse scandal.
It's becoming routine for priests to be assigned to multiple parishes, and 35 priests in the Cincinnati archdiocese are now responsible for more than one church.
"We're starting to feel the pinch," says the Rev. Earl Fernandes, who has studied the issue with other priests on the archdiocese's Futures Committee, which was formed to come up with solutions to the priest shortage. "The workload is significant, but nobody said it would be light. We have to prioritize."
Fecko tries to do that every day. He relies on an appointment book to keep track of parish meetings, charity events, mass schedules, counseling sessions, baptisms, confessions and religion classes.
"Even visiting the sick, I have to put it in my book to make time to do it," Fecko says.
Stressed about money
A few days after training the children to be servers, Fecko turns his attention to a bigger challenge: paying bills. He's worried about the school's January gas bill, which at $2,000 is higher than usual.
He's sure the bill will get paid, but it won't be easy. The school has almost no money in reserve. If the boiler breaks down or if the roof starts leaking, Fecko has no idea what he will do.
"This is cutting it close," Fecko says. "Some months you look at it and ask yourself, 'Are we going to make payroll?' "
It's another part of his job that has become more time-consuming and challenging. And it's a source of stress that he and most other priests didn't anticipate when they began their careers.
The combination of the priest shortage and an economic downturn has left priests like Fecko with money problems that threaten the health and, in some cases, the very life of their parishes.
The archdiocese expects to start closing or merging parishes at a faster rate to place priests where they can reach the most people. That could be bad news for parishes like St. Margaret's and St. John's, which are neither large nor wealthy.
"People support these parishes, and I want to keep them open as long as I can," Fecko says. "It's the spiritual heart of these people."
He has tried to boost fund-raising and step up recruitment for the school, which has 140 students. But festivals, spaghetti dinners and fish fries may not be enough.
He worries about the money as if it were his own. Last year, Fecko started to get depressed about it. He recognized the symptoms from his work with poor people when he was a social worker.
"I thought, 'Something is not right here.' I had no energy," Fecko recalls. "Because you're so much a part of the parish, you take it on as your own."
He's since learned to handle the stress better, taking time to reflect and pray about it every night. He's also learned to rely more on volunteer helpers.
Keith Ferrara is one of those volunteers. He admires Fecko's work ethic but says priests shouldn't be asked to do so much.
"If they stretch them out like this, they can't dedicate their time where they should," Ferrara says. "You have to have organizational skills that are equal to an extremely successful CEO."
Making time count
By the end of February, Fecko is feeling a little better about his parishes' financial situation. The weather is warmer and, he hopes, the gas bill will be easier to handle.
On the last Friday of the month, he gathers with parishioners for a fish fry to celebrate Lent and to raise money for scholarships at Prince of Peace, the parish school.
It takes Fecko's mind off his crowded appointment book. He walks around, sampling food and chatting with parishioners he usually sees only briefly on Sunday.
"This is when I see it's really working," he says. "People are just glad to be here."
And so is Fecko.
It occurs to him that for the first time all day there is nowhere else he needs to be.
Email dhorn@enquirer.com and damos@enquirer.com
