Dorchester’s nine remaining Catholic parishes will be bundled into five different “pastoral collaboratives” in a proposal laid out last Friday during a meeting of clergy at St. Peter’s Church on Bowdoin Street. The reorganization – “part of a larger, Archdiocesan-wide effort” – will be reviewed over the next several months by parish advisory councils and would likely be phased into effect over the next three to five years once a final plan is approved by Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

Under the proposal, St. Brendan and St. Ann parishes in Neponset would be paired and St. Gregory’s in Lower Mills would be grouped with St. Matthew’s in Dorchester and St. Angela’s in Mattapan.

St. Mark and St. Ambrose parishes, which already share a single pastor in Rev. Dan Finn, would continue to be a couple. St. Christopher parish on Columbia Point would be part of a group that includes four South Boston churches.

Church leaders have stressed that no churches will close as part of this process and all parishes will keep their original names. Still, the reorganization would mark a significant shift of perspective for Dorchester’s Catholic community, which endured a grueling reconfiguration process in 2003 that ended with the sudden closure of one longtime church, St. William’s in Savin Hill. More recently, most of the neighborhood’s parochial schools felt the impact of change when a centralized academy system replaced parish-run schools in 2008.

Dorchester is already home to one “tri-parish,” which was created in 2009. Under that structure, Holy Family, Blessed Mother Teresa (nee St. Margaret’s), and St. Peter’s churches all share a pastor, Rev. Jack Ahern, who manages the finances, clergy, schedules, and facilities at all three churches. The tri-parish would remain intact under the proposal unveiled last week.

Ahern has been instrumental in planning for this re-organization of Boston’s other parishes. “The pastoral plan only makes sense if we embrace the call from the cardinal to welcome people back, to evangelize,” he said. “This part of the process is about making these parishes stronger.”

In a document shared with the Reporter, the Archdiocesan Pastoral Planning Commission describes the groupings as “proposed pastoral collaboratives;” it begins: “These are posted so that pastoral staffs, councils, and parishioners can discuss these and offer their insights and recommendations. Please note these are proposals. The APPC needs and encourages your feedback and input.”

According to sources who have been briefed on the re-organization’s goals, the Archdiocese hopes that by pooling resources – “including donations and personnel” -- each parish church will be able to stay open in the coming years. The hope is that each new grouping can cumulatively bring in $500,000 per year in collection revenue and an average weekly attendance of at least 1,600 church-goers.

Meetings to discuss changes that could be triggered by these collaboratives will be discussed at the parish level over the coming days, with some councils convening this week to discuss the proposed changes. Parish councils from across the city will gather at a larger March 13 meeting in West Roxbury to offer more formal input into the proposed changes.

One potentially controversial element to the reorganization is a stipulation that would encourage the newly-formed umbrella parishes to welcome a new pastor. The language recommended by the commission states that “ordinarily” the present pastor would be asked to resign and make room for a new priest to take charge.

In Dorchester, however, it is possible – “indeed, likely” -- that some of the existing pastoral teams will stay intact even after parish groupings are formalized.

In the case of St. Brendan and St. Ann, for instance, their pastors, Rev. John Connolly and Rev. Sean Connors, respectively, were quick to tell their parishioners last weekend that they each have asked to stay on as part of a team ministry, even if that means one will serve as a parochial vicar instead of pastor.

Though the two neighboring parishes have distinct identities, they also share much in common, including housing for their priests. Connors resides at the St. Ann’s rectory since the old St. Brendan’s rectory on Rita Road is now the headquarters space for the Irish Pastoral Centre.

“Well before we ever got to this plan, Sean and I have been like a team,” said Connolly. “We live together and work together, and I’ve said to him that I have no personal need to be the pastor. But I’d still like to stay here and work. There’s no necessity for me to be a pastor.”

Connors agrees. In remarks from the altar after last Sunday’s 10:30 a.m. Mass, he told parishioners that both he and Connolly had made it clear to the commission that they would both like to remain in place. He called the pairing of the two parishes “a natural fit,” and said “mostly in jest” that parishioners could use this moment as an opportunity to seek a new pastor from the cardinal. With their permission, however, Connors made it clear that he wants to stay.

Ahern said that Cardinal O’Malley will “definitely” want to get input from parish councils and parishioners from all walks of life as he considers a final decision. “The cardinal wants to hear what people think,” he added. “We have three rounds of meeting planned with the people who work within the parishes and I expect we’ll have that many or more at the parish level.”

Rev. Vincent Daily, pastor at St. Gregory’s, said that teaming the Lower Mills church with St. Angela and St. Matthew parishes is a logical step. “There is already a lot of exchange with the Haitian communities in all three parishes and also we’ve been sharing our confirmations for the last couple of years anyway,” he said. “Our teams have all worked together.” Daily added that feedback thus far from parishioners have been “pretty positive.”

When he took over as pastor of St. Gregory’s in 2008, Daily was told to expect a six-year term. After that, given the parameters outlined by the Pastoral Planning Commission last Friday, he expects to be moving on. Still, as Rev. Connolly points out, the decision on who will lead the combined parishes is hardly set in stone at this juncture.

The proposal that has been submitted states that “ordinarily” the pastors of existing churches wouldn’t be the pastors under the reorganization plan, Connolly said. “I think that’s an important word – ordinarily. Most of us serving in Dorchester are relatively new to our present assignments. If the cardinal and commission want input from ground up, and they say they do and I take them at their word, then one of the necessary outcomes of that is that if there’s a groundswell of people wanting [a pastoral team to stay], it would make for a mistake if they didn’t try to accommodate that.”

One aspect of the commission’s proposal that could face push-back from Dorchester Catholics is adding of St. Christopher’s church to a constellation of South Boston churches. In 1956, St. Christopher’s was formed as a satellite parish of the onetime St. Margaret parish to accommodate the needs of families living at the former Columbia Point housing development. Today, the Dorchester church remains home to a small congregation and also houses the Notre Dame Montessori School, a popular preschool program.

“We’ll look at the proposals and talk with the parish council, and then get back to the proposers,” said longtime St. Christopher pastor Rev. George Carrigg. “We have questions about the model.”