Church of England has clergy crisis

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LONDON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- The Church of England is facing a crisis and is likely to lose almost 10 percent of its paid parish priests by 2013, church documents report.

The church forecasts there will be 7,700 paid clergy, down from 8,400 now, The Times of London reported Saturday. That would be a decrease of 22.5 percent since 2000.

Only one in 60 English residents worships regularly at an Anglican church, and the group is getting older. In 1980, the average age of Anglicans in the country was 37 and is expected to hit 67 in less than half a century.

The church now has 13,000 parishes with a total of 16,000 churches. A report given the Times concluded the old model of a paid priest in every parish is "broken in much of the country."

A spokesman said the big problem is not money but the number of retiring priests. He described the number of people seeking ordination as "encouraging" but said there are still not enough to replace the retirees.

Retirements and longer life expectancy have created their own financial crisis in the pension fund. The Archbishops Council approved a plan this week to raise the retirement age to 68.