Area churches to share priest

LA CRESCENTA — Faced with a diminishing number of ordained Roman Catholic priests, two local Catholic churches are learning to share one leader.

In two separate services Sunday, Father Ed Dover was officially installed as priest of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Montrose and St. James Catholic Church in La Crescenta, where Dover had served as church administrator for a year, officials from both churches said.

The dual installation makes St. James and Holy Redeemer the third set of parishes among 288 in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles that have had to turn to a rare practice called “twinning” — when one priest leads two congregations — in lieu of available priests for both churches, Dover said.

Though Dover was not officially installed until Sunday, he’s been serving double duty since July 1.

At that point, St. James had technically been without a full-time priest for a year, and the priest at nearby Holy Redeemer — Msgr. John K. Foley — had just retired, said Kathy McCauley, St. James business manager.

With Foley’s retirement, there was an opening at Holy Redeemer, but suitors weren’t exactly lining up for the position, said Jan Detanna, a Holy Redeemer parishioner and volunteer.

“Once he retired, there were really no priests to take his place. There were no extras,” Detanna said.

“There just aren’t any extra priests around anymore like there used to be. Some parishes used to have two or three priests. That luxury is gone. There’s not a lot of men going into the priesthood.”

But despite the diminishing number of ordained Catholic priests, the Catholic population is growing, Dover said.

Dover’s new dual role means a jam-packed weekend service schedule between his two churches and a heightened weekly workload of baptisms, weddings, funerals and other sacrament preparations, he said.

It also meant that Holy Redeemer had to drop its long-standing noon Mass, a result that has irked some congregants, Detanna said.

“It leaves a lot of people grumbling,” Detanna said.

But with help from Foley, who is now pastor emeritus at Holy Redeemer, and Father Camillo Bonsuuri, a visiting Ghanaian priest at St. James, Dover said the workload is manageable.

“I’m foolish enough to be excited by this,” Dover said.

“The best part is I’ve seen so many parishioners step forward and offer their help, and I think that’s going to be the key.”

St. James volunteer Yolanda Nielson said she supported Dover’s dual installation.

As a parishioner, things could be worse than having to share a priest, she said.

“There are not a lot of people who would like to be priests nowadays .?.?. it’s one of those things that you face with the times,” she said.

“For me, I just feel lucky at this point that I still have a priest in my parish. There are other parishes that don’t have one, so having one at Holy Redeemer is a blessing.”

It’s a blessing that 50-year St. James parishioner Edith Skeehan regarded with curiosity.

“Well, it is something very new,” Skeehan said. “It’s going to be a first experience for the priest, the parishioners, for everybody.”