Seventy-eight years after the Diocese of Steubenville was formed from counties that were part of the Diocese of Columbus, a process has begun to make the two possibly one again.
Steubenville Bishop Jeffrey Monforton informed his diocesan staff and clergy on Monday and announced publicly on Tuesday that a potential merger is being explored with Columbus.
Bishop Monforton indicated that Ohio’s bishops have discussed what he called the “best solution” moving forward and that the Congregation for Bishops in Rome and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have been apprised of the situation.
“There is concern about the effectiveness of our diocese in evangelization and celebration of the sacraments a decade from now,” he said.
There is no estimate yet on how long a potential unification might take to move through the various channels or how the changes ultimately will be structured, including a destination for Bishop Monforton, 59.
Columbus Bishop Earl Fernandes expects the U.S. bishops to address the situation at their November plenary assembly in Baltimore. A possible suppression of the Steubenville diocese will need their approval before the Vatican becomes involved and issues a final decision.
“Prior to my arrival, the Ohio bishops discussed the matter of the viability of the Diocese of Steubenville,” Bishop Fernandes said in an email to priests. “The Ohio bishops were unanimous that the situation in Steubenville couldn’t continue much longer.
“At this point, I ask you to keep the Diocese of Steubenville and Bishop Monforton in your prayers as they receive this news.”
The Diocese of Steubenville currently consists of 54 parishes and three missions, three high schools, one junior high and nine grade schools. It is also home to Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Thirty-six active priests (six age 70 and older and 12 in their 60s) and 14 deacons serve fewer than 30,000 Catholics, accounting for about 7% of the total population of 490,000 in the Steubenville diocese, which has been hard hit in the past 40 years by economic woes, job losses and internal financial difficulties. By comparison, the next smallest diocese in Ohio is Youngstown with 146,000 Catholics.
Bishop Monforton cited a dramatic decline of 45% in Sunday Mass attendance over the past 30 years, including a 20% drop in the past nine years, and the dwindling and aging population in the Ohio Valley.
“We are reminded that stubbornness and fortitude are not synonymous,” Bishop Monforton said. “Stubbornness serves self while fortitude, a virtue, serves Christ and his Church. It is with fortitude that we address this sad reality head-on.
“While we have much to be grateful for in our Christian discipleship since 1944, we owe it to our Lord Jesus Christ and the Church to address this difficult reality. In a way, like Jesus Christ, we fix our faces toward Jerusalem, fully aware that following the passion and death leads to the resurrection.”
The Steubenville diocese’s 13 counties are Athens, Belmont, Carroll, Gallia, Guernsey, Harrison, Jefferson, Lawrence, Meigs, Monroe, Morgan, Noble and Washington, stretching from the towns of Malvern and Minerva in the north to Ironton in the south. Eight of the 13 counties border the Ohio River.
Among the cities in the diocese besides Steubenville are Athens, Marietta, Ironton, Gallipolis, St. Clairsville, Carrollton and Cambridge. One of its notable churches, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption, is in Marietta.
The Diocese of Columbus encompasses approximately 220,000 Catholics across 23 counties. Bishop Fernandes was ordained and installed as the diocese’s 13th bishop on May 31 at Westerville St. Paul Church.
The possible merger would be the second to occur in the United States in the past few years. In 2020, the Diocese of Juneau, Alaska, which had the fewest number of Catholics in an American diocese, was combined with the Archdiocese of Anchorage.
At this point, it remains unclear how any restructuring might take place among Steubenville, Columbus and potentially Ohio’s other four Roman Catholic dioceses.
Pope Pius XII created the Diocese of Steubenville on Oct. 21, 1944, as a missionary diocese, splitting off the 13 counties in eastern and southeastern Ohio from the Diocese of Columbus due to the large geographic area.
Bishop John King Mussio, the chancellor in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, was installed on May 23, 1945, as Steubenville’s first shepherd in Holy Name Cathedral. At that time, the 42-year-old Mussio was the country’s youngest bishop.
Bishop Mussio, a former boxer, retired in 1977 and died a year later. Since then, four bishops have guided the Steubenville diocese, including Bishop Monforton, who was installed on Sept. 10, 2012 after serving in the Archdiocese of Detroit.
Two months after the creation of the Steubenville diocese, Bishop Michael Ready was appointed the fifth bishop of Columbus on Nov. 11, 1944, and one of his first major duties was to oversee the implementation of the new diocese while also adding counties to the Columbus diocese that were previously in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
In recent years, the Steubenville diocese has dealt with financial hardships and improprieties.
Former comptroller David Franklin embezzled nearly $300,000 from the diocese, which he acknowledged in federal court in July 2020, and also neglected to report to the Internal Revenue Service nearly $2.8 million in payroll taxes that were withheld from employees. The diocese not only owed that amount to the U.S. government, but also Franklin’s malfeasance resulted in an additional $1 million in penalties and interest.
The following month, in August 2020, Msgr. Kurt Kemo confessed to taking more than $300,000 from the diocese for personal indulgences but had paid back $289,000 before he was sentenced to six months in state prison. Kemo, the former vicar general, had served as the diocesan administrator in the interim between Bishop Daniel Conlon’s appointment to the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois, and Monforton’s arrival.
Earlier this year, Bishop Monforton announced that, due to a lack of funds, he was canceling a renovation of Holy Name Cathedral that had started in 2014. Bishop James Hartley, the fourth bishop of Columbus, had received his first assignment as a pastor at Holy Name in 1885 when it was a parish church and was consecrated as a bishop there on Feb. 25, 1904 before being formally installed at St. Joseph Cathedral in Columbus on March 1, 1904.
