Bishop Mark O’Toole of Plymouth has called on every Catholic in his diocese to be a “disciple-making disciple”.
In a pastoral message, the bishop noted that less than one per cent of the population in the region were church-going Catholics. This, he said, was “something akin to the percentages in countries like Pakistan or Myanmar . So we are very much in mission territory.”
Bishop O’Toole pointed out that the number of Mass-goers in Cornwall, Devon and Dorset has nearly halved over the last 30 years, from 27,000 to 14,000. He said that, while people speak of a “crisis of priests”, he sees a “crisis of disciples”.
