By Gretchen Keiser

A pastoral council, selected to represent a broad cross-section of opinion within the archdiocese, has come up with its list of the five top priorities for the archdiocese over the next five years.

Number one on the list is the establishment of a comprehensive plan to meet the food, shelter and emergency assistance needs of the poor.

Other priorities concern addressing the needs of special groups of people in parishes, such as the disabled and development for adults and youth; developing a plan for Black and Hispanic evangelization and leadership formation; and establishing a Commission for Peace and Justice in the archdiocese.

The five top priorities chosen by the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, a group of 22 people representing the six geographical sections of the archdiocese, have been submitted to Archbishop Thomas Donnellan and the Board of Consultors. This group is reviewing the top priorities arrived at earlier in the year by consultations with the priests and sisters in the archdiocese, with parish councils and with regional clusters of parishes known as deaneries.

The Board of Consultors together with the archbishop will review the entire consultation process giving weighted values to its various stages and recommendations. This will give the Archbishop a complete picture of how various segments of the archdiocese saw the priorities emerging.

The entire process of study began late last fall and was coordinated by Monsignor Jerry E. Hardy, chancellor of the archdiocese, and Father James Kelly, then director of religious education for the archdiocese.

The next step will be to decide which of the priorities can and should be adopted for action now, Monsignor Hardy said. This decision will follow upon the Consultors' recommendation to the Archbishop.

A beginning list of 14 items was distributed for consideration to archdiocesan priests, along with a chart that weighted the preferences selected. When those results were gathered, along with the opinions of the sisters of the archdiocese, the lists were distributed to parish councils to determine their preferences. Finally, the preferences of the six deaneries, representing the northeast, northwest and south rural and metropolitan subdivisions of the diocese, were obtained. They evaluated and ranked the priorities as they saw them.

The Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, which met June 12, reviewed the list of priorities as it had been determined up to that point.

The council's first choice -- the comprehensive plan to meet the needs of the poor -- had also been the first choice in consultations with priests and sisters and with deaneries, Monsignor Hardy said.

In discussions at its first meeting, the Pastoral Council viewed the task of selecting the top priorities as one of finding those areas where the diocese needs to improve its effort. Clearly, the five priorities chosen are not the only areas of importance, but, in the words of one participant, the priorities "focused on those things we are not yet doing well enough."

The survey of opinion was the most representative sampling of diocesan views since the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council led a similar inquiry seven years ago.

In addition to seeking a course for the archdiocese over the next five years, the priorities process had as one of its major goals the reconstitution of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, which had been dormant for the last six years.

The new council is organized with four representatives from each deanery, made up of one priest, one sister and two lay people. The reorganization of the council along deanery lines, with a plan to meet three times a year, is hoped to reestablish within the archdiocese a forum for "the lay voice of the Spirit" and a place where the priests, religious and laity from the different parishes can get a sense of the life and work of the archdiocese as a whole, Monsignor Hardy said.

"We need a good listening post, where all the people who make up the church in this area can be heard," he said. "The pastoral council served that function well in its earlier days and it is no surprise that at the June 12 meeting the people said a lot of good, helpful, and exciting things."