Priests in high demand as Catholic population rises

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5. Here in Iowa

When my mom was growing up I think all the large parishes in Dubuque had more than one priest. Even the rural parishes had at least one priest working there, if not more.

Where I live now the rural parishes often have a layperson or a member of a religious order who handle the administration of what was once several parishes and there's a priest who just travels back and forth to offer Mass. Even in Dubuque what was once three different parishes are now all one parish - the churches share a priest and staff. They even closed a church in Dubuque - St. Mary's because of declining numbers and the high cost of maintaining the church.

I remember growing up hearing several times from adults that by the time we were adults we would have to travel in to Dubuque to attend Mass as the rural parishes would all be closed. That hasn't happened with the parish I grew up in. There's been some population growth which has increased the size of that parish. But like I said a lot of the parishes are all clustered together where one priest is responsible for all the churches in an area. It seemed like every year for a while the Archdiocese had been closing a parish but that seems to have tapered off now.