Another sad sign of the times. This news comes from the Diocese of Fall River, in Massachusetts:

The Rev. Jay Mello sat on a metal dugout bleacher, a baseball bat in hand. He laughed and joked with several members of the Bishop Stang High School boys baseball team as they went through batting practice Monday.

Twenty minutes later, Mello, 30, boarded a yellow school bus and blessed the players just before they left for a state tournament game in Hanover. A player asked the young Bishop Stang chaplain if he would later be at the game.

“I’ll be there,” Mello said.

It was a typical afternoon for the devoted high school chaplain, but it was bittersweet. Citing a shortage of parish priests, Bishop George W. Coleman, head of the Fall River diocese, is removing all full-time chaplains from Catholic high schools in the diocese.

“With fewer priests, we don’t have the numbers to assign priests to the schools on a full-time basis,” said John Kearns, spokesman for the Diocese of Fall River.

With three priests retiring from ministry this month, the diocese will have 109 active priests for 90 parishes. In 10 years, the diocese projects that it will have only 58 active priests in ministry.

In 1978, the diocese had 200 active priests.

When the next school year begins in the fall, chaplains will be gone from Bishop Stang, as well as Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro, Bishop Connolly High School in Fall River and Coyle and Cassidy High School in Taunton.

Kearns said Masses, confessions and other ministerial tasks will be provided occasionally by priests who work near the schools. That arrangement has been in place at Pope John Paul II High School since its September 2007 opening in Hyannis, he said.

“We hope that there will be a priest present enough so if a student is in need of a priest, they can still have that access,” Kearns said.

However, the schools will not have the daily presence of a chaplain.

You can read more details at the link.