SULLIVAN COUNTY — Declining numbers of men entering the priesthood coupled with lower attendance at Catholic masses has forced the church to make some tough decision.

The Catholic faithful who attended church this past weekend received a letter dated July 26 – from Cardinal Timothy Dolan – outlining his plans for the merger of Sullivan County’s 18 churches into four parishes.

“The goal of the archdiocesan pastoral planning initiative is to strengthen and maintain the vitality of all parishes within the Archdiocese of New York for present and future generations of Catholics,” Cardinal Dolan said in his two-page letter.

“In Sullivan County, we’ve seen changing demographics, as parish-ioners have moved into and out of the  area for work, education and leisure,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Many quaint mission churches were established more than a century ago, before vacationers and seasonal workers had access to automobilies.

“These days, despite their characteristic architecture and intimate settings, some churches serve more as a convenience than a necessity for the practice of the faith,” Cardinal Dolan said.

New Parish Structure

Starting September 1, Sullivan County will be divided into four Catholic parishes, two along Route 97 and two along Route 17.

One priest will serve all the church buildings in each region with one additional priest for each of the two corridors to serve where needed.

The Callicoon-Obern-burg-Jeffersonville Region will include:

• St. Patrick’s in Long Eddy

• Holy Cross in Callicoon

• St. Mary’s in Obernburg

• St. George’s in Jeffer-sonville, and

• St. Francis in Youngville.

The Narrowsburg-Yulan Region will include:

• Our Lady of the Lake in Lake Huntington

• St. Francis Xavier in Narrowsburg

• St. Anthony of Padua - St. Thomas Aquinas in Yulan and

• Sacred Heart in Pond Eddy

The Liberty-Woodbourne-Livingston Manor Region will include:

• Gate of Heaven in Roscoe

• St. Aloysius in Livingston Manor

• Sacred Heart, Livingston Manor

• St. Peter’s in Liberty and

• Immaculate Conception in Woodbourne

The Monticello-Wurts-boro Region will include:

• St. Anne of the Lake, White Lake

• St. Joseph, Mongaup Valley

• St. Peter, Monticello

• St. Joseph, Wurtsboro

New Schedule?

With just one priest to cover either four or five churches, depending on the size of the parishes, new mass times and locations will certainly be coming.

Many of these concerns were discussed at a series of meetings convened by Eileen Mulcahy, Archdiocesan Vice Chancellor for Pastoral Planning. 

From the first meeting in November, 2024 through this summer, Mulcahy, in consultation with two of Cardinal Dolan’s auxiliary bishops, Bishop Gerardo Colacicco and Bishop Edmund Whalen, developed the plan to extend pastoral and temporal care to the parishioners of Sullivan County.

Changing Times

In July of 2017, western Sullivan County received the news that the Franciscans were leaving Sullivan County after 122 years of dedicated service to their Catholic flock.

Once the home of St. Joseph’s Seraphic Seminary in Callicoon, every Franciscan Priest east of the Mississippi went through Callicoon to attend seminary on their way to being ordained.

Many priests of notoriety were associated with Callicoon, including Father Mychal Judge, a NYC Fire Chaplain, who died ministering to the injured during the September 11, 2001 attacks on our country.

The number of Franciscan Priests had declined 72 percent during the past 50 years, and they could no longer serve the churches in Long Eddy, Callicoon, Obernburg, Yulan, Narrowsburg, Jeffersonville and Youngsville.

Much the same can be said for the Archdiocese of New York, where the number of priests has fallen by more than half since 1970, according to data published by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.