When he assumes the role of Bishop of Sioux City, Iowa, Bishop-elect John Keehner will find a long-established diocese with a rich history and vibrant laity and clergy committed to evangelization and to facing the challenges that await him, representatives of the Sioux City Diocese said.
“We have great support from the Catholic population that is active in our state,” said Deacon Mark Prosser, diocesan chancellor, director of pastoral planning, chief of staff and special assistant to Bishop R. Walker Nickless, apostolic administrator of Sioux City, who had served as Bishop since 2006. “We have extremely dedicated laity, and priests and deacons. They are our strongest resources.”
“The faithful of the Diocese of Sioux City have a long history of strong commitment to the Church and the Sacraments. Catholic schools are vibrant and well supported,” said Bishop Walter Nickless, citing his long tenure as Bishop of Sioux City. “We are enriched by our diversity in recent years with parishioners coming from Southeast Asia, Africa, Central and South America, Mexico and other parts of the world to make their home here.”
The Sioux City diocese has spent much effort over the past decades in pastoral planning, dealing with such issues as declining population, aging of the clergy, decreased number of priests and lower rates of participation in Church life by Catholics. The focus is always ensuring that the people have access to Masses and the Sacraments, said Dawn Prosser, director of communications for the diocese.
Iowa, which became a state in 1846, sits in the Central Time Zone—west of the Mississippi River and the states of Illinois and Wisconsin. Iowa is bordered on the north by Minnesota, the south by Missouri and the west by South Dakota and Nebraska. Iowa by population size ranks as the 31st largest state.
As for the Sioux City diocese, Dawn Prosser said, “We are in the northwest quadrant of Iowa made up of 24 counties—mostly rural. Sioux City is the largest city in the diocese, where the Central Catholic Offices are located. It takes about three hours to drive from east to west or driving north to south.” Sioux City’s population is about 85,000, with about 150,000 in the Sioux City metropolitan area.
Sioux City is an estimated 13- to 14-hour drive from the western-most point of the Youngstown Diocese. “We have a lot of activities—meetings, educational sessions—in Storm Lake, which is more centrally located,” Dawn Prosser said. “Sioux City sits on the Missouri River to the west and borders on the corners of South Dakota and Nebraska. Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is 85 miles away and Omaha, Nebraska, is 96 miles away. Des Moines, our capital, is 199 miles away.” Much of the Sioux City metropolitan area is in neighboring states, she said. South Sioux City lies in Nebraska, with a population of 14,043, making it the 14th-most populous city in Nebraska. North Sioux City, with a population of about 3,000, is in South Dakota.
“We are very rural, very [agriculture]-based and lots of small towns,” said Deacon Prosser.
Monsignor Kevin McCoy, co-vicar general and pastor of two parishes, who has been involved in diocesan pastoral planning, pointed out that in the 24 counties, “So much of the economy is tied to livestock, egg production and grain—especially corn and soybeans, which are used for domestic and export food supplies, as well as biodiesels, such as ethanol.” There are also packing plants and other farm businesses.
The Sioux City diocese “has a rich history,” Dawn Prosser said. Pope Leo XIII established the Diocese of Sioux City in 1902, carving out 24 counties in Northwest Iowa from the Archdiocese of Davenport, which had been founded in 1837. “There are a lot people who immigrated here from Germany and Ireland in the 19th century. They built beautiful gothic churches.
“According to the latest statistics, there are 84,000 Catholics in the diocese, 37 parishes with multiple worship sites and 36 priests in active ministry,” Dawn Prosser said.
“There are 6,000 students in our Catholic schools,” Deacon Prosser said, adding. “That is good news.”
“There are 15 Catholic school systems in the diocese,” Dawn Prosser pointed out. “Our Catholic schools are steady in enrollment with a five percent increase this year due to education savings accounts,” which she said are different from vouchers “but have helped provide a choice in education for some parents who may have had trouble financing it otherwise.” In addition, she noted, “Our parishes support their Catholic schools. A lot of dioceses are not that fortunate.”
In addition, Dawn Prosser said, “There is one Catholic college—Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, founded by Franciscan Sisters” in 1929. Enrollment is close to 1,000 students.
She also noted that the diocese has beautiful shrines, including two designated as pilgrimage sites for the Jubilee Year of Hope—the Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, which she said “is the largest man-made grotto in the world”—with all the stones laid by hand and a large collection of precious and semi-precious stones, as well as other minerals, shells and fossils—and Trinity Heights Queen of Peace Shrine in Sioux City.
“It’s a beautiful area, too,” Dawn Prosser continued, with scenic lakes and countryside.
“We are growing in our diversity,” Dawn Prosser commented, citing various population influxes in recent decades. “Iowa’s largest minority group is Latino as of 2000, with a large growth in the 1990s. The Des Moines Register reported that by 2019, Latino immigrants from Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru and Cuba made up 7.4 percent of Iowa’s population,” which is estimated at 2.3 million. “Many came to work in the agricultural field and packing plants. We do have parishioners who have been here for 30-plus years.”
Southeast Asian immigrants came to Iowa in large numbers during the 1970s, Dawn Prosser noted, citing the number of “boat people”—those who left Vietnam after the Communist takeover in 1975. There have also been influxes from Laos, Burma, Micronesia, Sudan and other African nations.
The diocese has strived to address the needs of the new immigrant groups, Dawn Prosser said. “As of our 2023 Mass counts, 84.58 percent attended Mass in English, 14.3 percent in Spanish, 1.12 percent Latin and 1.12 percent Vietnamese,” she said. “About 20 percent of our priests are international, having been from elsewhere but coming here to minister—three from India, one from Africa, two from Mexico and four Vietnamese priests.”
“Some of our parishes are highly diverse—the Cathedral Parish in Sioux City has 84.82 percent of parishioners attending a Spanish Mass. Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in the northwest sector of the diocese, a newly merged parish, has 76.02 percent of parishioners attending a Spanish Mass. A Vietnamese Mass is offered monthly in Storm Lake,” with about 30 people attending regularly. Around 120 attend the weekly Vietnamese Mass in Sioux City.
Of the 56 permanent deacons in the diocese, “two speak Spanish and one speaks Vietnamese,” Dawn Prosser noted.
In addition, she continued, “In January 2023, the Diocese of Sioux City fully financed Welcome, a program through the diocesan Catholic Charities organization,” which provides quality immigration legal services, case management and mental health services. “A lot of our refugees have been through trauma,” she said. The programs are now CLINIC (Catholic Legal Immigration Network) affiliated.
Yet, Deacon Prosser noted, the diversity is not uniform. “Most of the ethnic diversity is centered around larger urban centers or around packing plants facilities, on larger farms that require labor. Other areas have little diversity.” In fact, he explained, according to the last census “16 of the 4 counties lost population. The eight that gained were predominantly from immigration.”
Declining population in general in the counties of the diocese, along with other challenges, has been the focus of much of the pastoral planning in the Sioux City diocese in recent decades.
“The Sioux City diocese has certainly led in the whole pastoral planning process,” Deacon Prosser noted. “Bishop Nickless has worked tirelessly to pursue pastoral planning.”
Monsignor McCoy, who spearheaded pastoral planning efforts during the late ’80s and most of the ’90s, said, “We looked at the demographics of the 24 counties and the number of priests, the shifting population, aging of the clergy, the number of vocations. It has been a long process.”
“Over the last half-century we’ve seen the Catholic population decline from around 120,000 to about 84,000,” Monsignor McCoy said.
The percentage of the population of the 24 counties that is Catholic is estimated at around 20 percent, Deacon Prosser said, “but we’re actually doing a deep dive demographic study with the University of Iowa to determine the percentage more closely.”
There is also the declining number of priests and lay participation in the Church—a widespread concern in the Church in the U.S. “We have registered Catholics and Catholics who are actively practicing their faith at 29 percent, which is a little bit better than national average,” Deacon Prosser said.
As for the number of priests, “We had 160 priests in the 1980s,” Deacon Prosser said. “Now we have only 36 priests in active ministry. Of those 36, 14 are eligible to retire in the next nine years. Our retired priests help out greatly but they are aging out of that role as well. We have nine seminarians. Our vocations efforts struggle—same as most dioceses. We retire priests faster than we ordain them.” Deacon Prosser cites such issues as smaller families, diminishing interest in vocations and the secular world encroaching on our religious life.
On the other hand, diocesan representatives are encouraged by their decades-long efforts toward pastoral planning—anticipating trends and taking measures to prudently allocate limited resources to their best advantage.
“It’s been an arduous task,” Monsignor McCoy said, which has included “getting laity to assist more in the operation of the parishes” and more strategic placement of priests. “At one time there were more priests teaching in the high schools but that has become less viable because we need priests in the parishes. We have, however, been able to maintain a priestly presence in the high schools as chaplains.”
With strategic planning, Monsignor McCoy said, the diocese has been able to find workable arrangements. In his own case, in addition to his diocesan duties, Monsignor McCoy is pastor of two parishes—Holy Trinity of Webster County in Fort Dodge and St. Mary in Humboldt County. “Both communities have very strong schools,” he noted.
“At one point, there were 12 parishes in Webster County. In 2008, there were eight functioning parishes” that had been incorporated into Holy Trinity Parish, with eight churches.
“There was a lot of mourning, but I think that people are pleased with the new worship site,” Monsignor McCoy said. “We brought in a lot of the sacred items from the old churches,” such as Stations of the Cross, statues and furniture, which helps foster the association of familiarity.
“With the consolidations, there’s been a great deal of effort to ensure fiscal accountability. And most importantly, with all the mergers, we have been able to continue to have Masses and Sacraments,” Monsignor McCoy explained.
“We are providing the Sacraments and a faith home,” Dawn Prosser said. “And we love our priests.”
In addition, Deacon Prosser emphasized, the people of the diocese will circle around Bishop-elect Keehner and support him and work hand-in-hand with him as they have with our previous bishops.
Bishop Nickless commented that when he came to the diocese as Bishop nearly 20 years ago, “I knew nothing of Iowa. I found the people to be warm and welcoming. Our seminarians, deacons and priests are devoted servants, dedicated to building up the Kingdom of God,” he said. “I have grown to love this great state and the people in northwest Iowa. The Church is alive and well as we look with hope to all the future holds with Bishop-elect Keehner as our shepherd!”
