Fr. Dan Tracy
“A community in which everything depends on the parish priest is a fragile community, and presiding does not mean doing everything. It means fostering communion, drawing on the energies of others, connecting people and situations, and safeguarding unity.” – Pope Leo XIV comments on September 18, 2026.
Since the letter from Bishop Powers about a change in priests for the parishes of the Medford and Rice Lake areas was published on September 8th, I have not communicated with the parishes broadly beyond the letter. In that time, I have been grateful to hear from many parishioners expressing their concern and their solidarity with the leadership of our parishes during this time of change.
As I spoke about when beginning our CSA appeal two weekends ago, we must be reminded that our parishes are part of a larger reality in the Body of Christ. I think it is important to provide some updates about our current priest availability in the Diocese. Even though we have experienced a significant shift of moving from three active priests down to one, we are not alone in this time of change. This will also be some helpful context for next weekend’s bulletin reflection in which I will share some observations after my first 100 days serving here.
Here are some details on our current situation:
- There are presently 20 incardinated priests of the Diocese of Superior in active ministry.
- Sixteen of these 20 priests are currently assigned to ministry at 43 of our 103 parishes.
- The remaining 60 parishes are served by priests that are incardinated priests of various Dioceses in India. There are presently 21 priests from India who are here temporarily serving these 60 parishes.
- There are presently 19 retired priests of the Diocese of Superior living within our Diocese. Only six of these priests are regularly celebrating a Sunday Mass publicly due to health or other reasons.
- There are presently 142 weekend Masses being offered throughout our Diocese which requires at least 39 priests. With only 37 active priests in parishes, we now rely every weekend on our retired priests or priests from outside of our Diocese. Of course, this also means that any time a priest is ill or on vacation, we again are required to ask a retired priest or a priest from outside our Diocese.
This weekend will be another reminder for us of this reality as Fr. Phil Juza will be away helping cover Masses in the Solon Springs area and we will be joined by Fr. Raymond Thomas, a retired priest of the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio who is a traveling preacher with Unbound.
We are grateful to have our largest seminarian cohort in over a decade with nine seminarians. However, we must be mindful that even if 30 men entered the seminary tomorrow (which would be an absolutely amazing thing!), we would not see a noticeable change in the numbers of our incardinated priests until the year 2034.
So, here we are.