Move and merge.
A bit to the south of me, I heard Bishop Robert Barron has scored a huge anonymous donation to acquire land and build a new pastoral center nearer the center of his Winona-Rochester diocese. Seems to me Albert Lea or even Blue Earth would be more of a median location in southern Minnesota. If they did a population-weighted map, I suppose the center of the diocese might be a tad left of the medical metro area. Or even in it.
Map, right, from the wiki with my capital letter intrusions.
Meanwhile, in another midwestern state, a proposed merger in Ohio between the purple and yellow dioceses, below left, has been put on pause. Apparently, the US bishops were going to discuss at their meeting
next week. But enough clergy and lay people along the banks of the Ohio River have raised a fuss, and Bishop Monforton has pulled back, pending more synodality. Punditry here.
What to make of these changes? It’s not the first time in the pandemic era a small diocese was blended into a larger. I suspect Steubenville has, as the lingo goes, a bit more brand identification than Juneau, Alaska. Do its people cling to this? Despite sagging infrastructure and a lack of resources compared to other Ohio dioceses?
Thoughts?
Catholic Sensibility 