Seventy church buildings in the Diocese of Roermond are currently in the process of being closed, Bishop Cornelis Van den Hout, 61, of Roermond, Netherlands, told Nd.nl on March 3. In 2026, he employed a full-time economist to oversee the closure of church buildings. "It's an urgent issue. The financial figures leave us with no other option," Bishop Van den Hout said. He believes that the downward spiral will not stop after the closing of the seventy churches. "At the moment, the diocese has 280 church buildings. Around the turn of the century, we had 360. Occasionally, a church would be closed in the previous century, but until 1981, new ones were still being built." Monsignor Van den Hout added that presiding over the Eucharist in a church "requires a certain number of people — not ten people in a church that can hold several hundred". "Given the current financial situation and declining church attendance, it is inevitable that we will designate one centrally located church building …More