Parish Cluster News Update

parish cluster NEWS UPDATE.

Saint Michael's West Bromwich, Holy Cross Stone Cross,
Saint Mary's Wednesbury.

JANUARY 2026. Saint Mary's returned to the Deanery of Walsall and Lichfield, from the deanery of Wolverhampton and Dudley. During the recent visitation, parishioners made it known that they felt that their true deanery was Walsall. This was important because of the new deanery restructuring that was underway. It was felt that the original decision to cluster with Tipton and Dudley wouldn't be a favorable one as parishioners felt that Stone Cross and West Bromwich would be better suited.
Therefore it is now decided that Saint Mary's will now be clustered with Stone Cross and West Bromwich.

FEBRUARY 2026. Fr Daniel at West Bromwich already has Pastoral responsibility for Stone Cross, so St Mary's will be joining that cluster of Churches.
Fr Michael is to meet with Fr Daniel in the next few weeks to discuss changes that are inevitable in order for both parish priests to support one another.
Initially they will look at mass times, and there may be changes made in the future.
We have been extremely lucky at Saint Mary's, in that, we are perhaps one of the very few parishes that have not been impacted by changes happening all around us. However, that is now going to change. The reason why these changes are happening is due to a lack of priests, but also due to the declining number of parishioners attending Mass. We have more masses now than at any other time in the history of the Catholic Church in this country with fewer people going to them.
So, there will be fewer masses. Priests will be afforded more downtime. Many priests are run ragged trying to keep up with the demands of an aging population, that the few remaining priests are falling ill, or at worse, dying because of the stress. So that's going to be addressed.
This is just an insight into what is to change, there will be more changes in the next four years.
So what can we look forward to at Saint Mary's. Well, there may be fewer Masses, there may be changes to Saturday and Sunday Mass times. However, these will have to be agreed with the bishop.
As changes occur, we shall endeavor to inform you by this website.

MARCH 2026. At the last meeting of the deanery in March, it was announced that the Parishes of Saint Michael's West Bromwich and Holy Cross, Stone Cross are to merge as soon as possible. That means that there will be one parish with two Churches. This means that initially Saint Mary's will cluster with a merged parish.
This is likely to be a priority for the two parishes involved, and it will be some time after Easter when talks begin about Clustering.

MAY 2026. To date there has been no other information given concerning the clustering of the parish. Fr Daniel is probably working on the merging of his two parishes.