PROVIDENCE—After serving as the pastor of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish for more than 30 years, Father Daniel Trainor is officially retired, although he enjoys helping brother priests cover their busy schedules by celebrating Masses at their parishes whenever he is needed.
While Father Trainor lives in Providence at St. Joseph Parish’s Regina Cleri residence, he also enjoys the opportunity to see some of the world in his retirement.
“I am really fortunate that my parents left me a small inheritance,” Father Trainor says. “I saved this money so I could do a little traveling in retirement. Many of my brother priests do not have this luxury and depend entirely on the diocesan stipend and the little income they receive from social security.”
In retirement, a priest is paid a stipend of $22,500. The diocesan clergy retirement pension—like many pension funds—is underfunded however, with earnings from the fund currently only able to pay the stipends of about 20 retired priests.
This pension fund is also supported through contributions from the parishes, the Catholic Charity Appeal and the clergy retirement collection, which cover the shortfall.
The diocese has already begun to prepare for the increase in retired priests that will come over the next ten years. In the next decade, 40 percent of active priests in the diocese will be older than 70.
Fortunately, the diocese has made adjustments to the pension structure to strengthen the fund, but, there is still more work to do.
Priests do receive social security, but since their contributions have been relatively small over the years, their returns are often not significant.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law established the age of 75 as the mandatory pastor retirement age. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops asked each diocese to develop norms regarding retirement.
It has become common in most dioceses, as it is in the Diocese of Providence, that a priest will be eligible to retire at 70 years of age. In secular life, people are able to consider retirement at 62, with partial social security.
Depending on the year one is born, full benefits come at either 65 or 67 years of age. If a priest is to retire at 70, he is still asked to work for three to eight years longer than most people.
But, some priests remain in parishes, diocesan administration, or chaplaincies for many years beyond 70, as health permits. In 2011, four priests retired from parish assignments, bringing the total number of diocesan retired priests, or senior priests, as they are often called, to 86.
So what does a retired priest do?
First, he is still a priest with faculties, or permissions, to administer the sacraments in the diocese. Sometimes he will live at a parish or in a diocesan affiliated retirement home.
If his family has been able to purchase a home for him, he may choose to live in a private residence. He will spend many weekends covering Masses for priests who are sick or on vacation.
A priest will hear confessions and maybe volunteer to celebrate daily Mass at a nearby parish. He will still be asked to baptize children and celebrate wedding Masses. He will still make sick calls to hospitals and nursing homes, and will still be there to listen when someone has a problem. Prayer will still be the center of his life.
No priest will ever say that he first answered God’s call because he wanted to take care of a church building or be the director of a diocesan office.
But the reality is that over the decades of his vocation, a priest will spend many years as the CEO of a small business: a parish.
That means worrying about leaking roofs, cracked asphalt parking lots and broken heating boilers.
Beyond that, some priests are asked to run diocesan offices or even colleges and universities. They end up spending lots of time crunching numbers and making policy decisions.
Although the temporal concerns of balancing budgets and fixing leaking roofs are gone, a priest in “retirement” can still be very busy. After so many years of selfless service to the church, he will finally get to be a priest for the reasons he had in mind years ago.
