Save The Parish - Cornwall

Churchgoers from across Cornwall have written to the Bishop of Truro demanding an immediate moratorium on drastic cost-cutting schemes that will cut clergy numbers, redraw parish boundaries and change worship in the county forever. The letter resulted from a public meeting in January attended by worried parishioners from 10 of the 12 deaneries in the county. It called for an “open honest and transparent “ rethink of the destructive and irreversible cutbacks contained in the diocese’s On The Way plans. It came as the county’s bishops finally admitted this weekend to “seismic” plans to do away with Cornwall’s traditional parish priests and instead impose “oversight ministry” where clergy will become little more than administrators supervising lay staff running multiple churches and taking over religious affairs. “The traditional ‘vicar’ role that most of us have in mind when we think of someone wearing a dog collar, well that’s gone now” the Rt Rev Hugh Nelson, Bishop of St Germans, told