How do you run a diocese with just a few priests and hundreds of miles of territory to cover?
The St. Anthony Messenger finds some fascinating answers in Alaska:

Despite the shortage of priests, the Anchorage Archdiocese has 32 vibrant parishes and missions. Parishes in urban Anchorage are much like city parishes anywhere, and the city has its share of strip malls and stores like Target and Wal-Mart.

But beyond Anchorage, one will find rural churches which see a priest only once or twice a month. In a program pioneered by Archbishop Emeritus Francis Hurley, a network of lay and religious parish directors ministers to parishes and conducts services in the absence of a priest.

“They’re fully responsible for the parish,” says the retired Archbishop Hurley. “They do everything but what only a priest can do.”

A good example of this lay leadership is Renamary Rauchenstein, who has been the director at St. Bernard Parish in Talkeetna for 12 years. Talkeetna, 120 miles north of Anchorage at the archdiocese’s northern edge, is a tourist mecca at the base of Mount McKinley, North America’s highest peak.

The parish hasn’t had a resident priest in 15 years. Like so many other small churches throughout Alaska, St. Bernard was built with assistance from The Catholic Church Extension Society, an organization whose mission is to strengthen “the Church’s presence and mission in under-resourced and isolated communities across the United States.” It has been a source of support for the Alaskan Church.

Rauchenstein, the mother of eight, presides over Word and Communion services in the absence of a priest, and presents reflections on the Sunday Scripture for the 35 families who make up the parish. The population swells when the summer tourists descend.

“I’m a volunteer. Everyone volunteers,” she says. When Rauchenstein looks out at the parish on Sunday, “There’s not one family that’s not involved.”

St. Bernard’s has paid for a visiting priest from Tanzania to come to Talkeetna each summer for the past five summers. An Irish monk arrived this fall and will spend several months ministering to the parish. Priests “on the circuit” visit from Anchorage sporadically during the winters.

Rauchenstein says the parish yearns for a year-round priest for the sacraments and pastoral presence, but the years without a resident priest have given parishioners a sense of ownership of their parish.

“The previous model of priesthood–what the priest says goes–isn’t the model of priesthood we need here now,” says Rauchenstein.

Check out the rest at the link. It’s an intriguing glimpse at a part of the Church many of us rarely get to see.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the region has a thriving diaconate. 

 H/T CNS.