|TOP|The Catholic Church in Scotland is facing a future of more closures as attendance figures continue to fall and the number of priests is set to halve in some areas, reports Scotland on Sunday.

A radical restructuring plan has been put forward by the head of Scotland’s Roman Catholics Cardinal Keith O’Brien that will see old parish boundaries shifted to create new clusters of churches that will ‘share’ priests.

O’Brien’s Edinburgh Archdiocese released new figures that reveal an expected drop in the number of fully active priests in the area from the present 63 to 34 in just one decade.

The Catholic Church in Scotland chose radical change over the prospect of parishes without priests as the average age of priests in Scotland now stands at over 60 and the number of new vocations has seen a considerable drop.

|QUOTE|Church leaders have warned that the future will see worshippers travelling long distances to attend Mass in much the same way they would to go shopping in out-of-town shopping centres.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said: "You have cinemas, retail parks and shopping centres all centralising. Nobody seems to think twice about crossing Edinburgh to go to the Gyle shopping centre.

"There needs to be a cultural change that going to Mass will involve a longer round trip of maybe five or 10 miles."

Both the Catholic Church and the Church of Scotland have seen massive falls in their attendance figures, with the number of practising Catholics down 20 per cent since the mid-1990s and regular Kirk attendees totalling just 535,834 now compared with 1.3 million in the 1960s.

|AD|Cardinal O’Brien, who circulated a letter at the weekend detailing his plans for a consultation exercise, remains optimistic, however.

O'Brien insisted: "In no way am I pessimistic about the future. At this time, I would like to thank the Irish and Polish priests, and also those who have come from Malta and parts of Africa to assist from time to time for different periods in the diocese.

"However, the fact remains, we are not producing enough home-grown Scottish priests. That is the root of the problem. In the months and years ahead, there is a tremendous challenge lying ahead for the Catholic laity here in Scotland, in the Church and the world."

A spokesman for the Church added: "I have no doubt that this is the sort of exercise that may well be repeated across the country.

"Catholics have been spoilt by the fact that we had a huge influx of Irish clergy who sustained the Scottish Church when it wasn't sustaining itself. The norm has been a local parish with two or three priests in it. Now we take exception to having one priest or having a priest covering two parishes."

Cardinal O’Brien admitted that the issue of closing parishes was contentious. He said: "People have so much emotional attachment to a parish, maybe because they got married there or had their child baptised there.

"But people think that priests appear from a central warehouse somewhere. If a parish has not provided anyone to be ordained for five, 10, 15 years, it needs to be asking itself some questions."