CATHOLIC leaders are to announce a further raft of proposed parish closures and mergers across west and central Scotland in the coming days.
Congregations will be told this weekend which parishes across the Diocese of Motherwell have been recommended to be shut owing to a national shortage of priests and a long term fall in numbers of worshippers.
Each of the diocese deaneries, essentially a cluster of parishes, will be affected.
Sources have indicated the number of parishes to shut within the Motherwell Diocese, which covers most of Lanarkshire and has the second most populous Catholic congregation in Scotland, could be around 20.
A spokesman for the Diocese said the process was vital but that only recommendations were being put on the table at this stage.
Scotland's largest Catholic diocese, Glasgow, has already begun closing some parishes, amid an expectation it will have just 45 priests within two decades, enough for fewer than half its current number of parishes.
The Diocese of Galloway has also released figures showing the number of priests there has more than halved since 1990, with the fall in churchgoers nearly as steep.
Parishioners in Ayrshire, Dumfrieshire and Galloway have been told the situation is "no longer sustainable" with calls for "changes in mindset, in expectation and in structures."
A spokesman for the Diocese said only the recommendations to be put to the clergy and parishes had been completed at this stage.
He added: "We need to start from somewhere and these recommendations are where we're starting from.
"But they may well not be where we will finish."
"But the process is vital and we have made it clear that all clergy and parishes should have an input into what is finally decided."
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