Churches in Waterford couldn’t afford to pay priests over Christmas

The number of people attending weekly mass continues to decrease.

The Catholic diocese of Waterford and Lismore has said that it had no money to pay its priests' wages at Christmas, following a result of a major downturn in the amount of funds collected from parishioners every week. Speaking to WLR FM's Deise Today programme on Monday morning, Waterford and Lismore spokesman Father Liam Power had this to say: "There was no money at Christmas and we had to get €5,000 from each parish out of parish funds. Long term, it's not sustainable... it's seriously depleted, that fund." He went on to say that: "Each parish should be contributing enough to the common fund to support its own priests. If not, maybe they would have to contribute from the basket collection." This isn't the first bit of news that has highlighted the low numbers attending masses in Ireland in recent times. Just last week we shared the news that a number of Dublin churches will now use contactless payment for the collection in mass. The Archdiocese of Dublin issued a statement to JOE on Friday, which read: "Financial contributions to the Church in Dublin have been in decline for several years for a variety of reasons, including a decline in the number of people attending weekly Mass."