Archdiocese Proposes Parish Grouping for St. Joseph, St. Francis of Assisi in Medford

The Archdiocese of Boston has released a plan to consolidate a total of 290 parishes into 125 collaborative parishes. Under the current proposal, St. Joseph Church in Medford Square and St. Francis of Assisi in North Medford would operate under one pastoral staff.

Medford's third catholic church, St. Raphael, would remain its own parish.

A combination of dropping attendance, finances and a shortage of priests led to the new plan, according to a recent report by WBUR.

“We made this proposal looking at the fact that this is already happening, it’s going to continue to happen,”  Monsignor William Fay, co-chair of the Archdiocesan Planning Commission, told WBUR. “The alternative will be that we look at the merging of parishes and closing some of them, which was not a direction we wanted to go in.”

View the PDF attached on the right to see a list of the draft list of proposed parish groupings in Medford and nearby.