The bishop was blunt.

At Patricia Phillips’ 1995 installation as the first Roman Catholic parish coordinator in Maine, then-Bishop Joseph Gerry told parishioners in Washington County: “Pat will, for all practical purposes, serve as your pastor.”

She preaches at liturgical celebrations in the absence of a priest.

She supervises the preparation of wakes, funerals and committal services, and, if a priest is absent, leads prayers at those services.

She is responsible for all nursing home, jail and hospital visits.

She provides spiritual leadership and pastoral counseling.

She represents the parish at ecumenical gatherings, civic affairs and lots of meetings.

“Bishop Joseph empowered me to be a pioneer and to model a new form of leadership in the church,” Phillips said in an interview last month.

Such leadership is at the heart of the current bishop’s plans, announced last week, to realign Maine’s 135 parishes.

On Tuesday, Bishop Richard Malone outlined the long-planned realignment, which is designed to address an expected shortage of priests.

He acknowledged that the changes could sharply reduce the number of weekend Masses celebrated in Catholic churches throughout the state.

The plan will be put into place by 2010. It does not directly call for the closing of any parishes or the sale of any church property, but reduces the number of parish groupings, called clusters, in Maine from 31 to 27. It assigns a certain number of priests to each cluster.

There are about 95 diocesan priests serving Maine’s 234,000 Roman Catholics. Because of anticipated retirements and the numbers of men studying for the priesthood, that total in five years is expected to drop to between 60 and 65, Malone said.

He stressed last week that the plan was driven by the church’s mission “to be an evangelizing people.”

“It will involve the laity in new and very strong ways and will call for very significant collaboration in the leadership of the church as we go forward – collaboration of the clergy and the laity in new forms of leadership.”

Around Maine there are examples of how lay and ordained Catholics are trying to ease local priests’ workloads:

. Robert Cleveland of Hope, ordained last June as a permanent deacon. A lifelong Roman Catholic, he is married and has a career outside the church.

. Patricia Phillips, the only lay parish coordinator in the state. She serves at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lubec and lives in the rectory.

. Volunteer Theresa “Terry” Maher, who lives in her own home in Milford. She has shared her time, talent and treasure at Holy Family Catholic Church in neighboring Old Town for decades.

The Catholic Church has been the center of Maher’s life since she was a child. She was only 8 when her father died, but she remembers going to Mass with him and having a sense that the Church was his center, too.

A licensed practical nurse at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor, Maher, 51, has devoted thousands of hours to her Old Town church. Two years ago, she was given the Immaculate Conception Award, launched by then-Bishop Gerry to honor Catholics for their outstanding service to the diocese.

“So many of us do not realize how much we have to give,” she said. “Even that realization is a gift. Once we realize that, our gratitude grows, and we can help others realize what they have to give,” Maher said.

She worked on a statewide program called Stewardship as a Way of Life. At the heart of the program are the three T’s: time, talent and treasure.

Maher said the program helped heal Holy Family after the historically Irish St. Mary’s and historically French St. Joseph’s parishes merged in 1992.

“I really have a passion for the concept of stewardship,” she said. “I’ve been encouraged to do things I never would have done because someone told me they thought I’d be good at [stewardship].”

Robert Cleveland is one of 35 men in the Maine diocese who serve in their communities as permanent deacons. He is assigned to St. Bernard’s Catholic Church in Rockland. “Permanent” deacons, for Roman Catholics, are men ordained for life who do not intend to become priests. A married man may become a permanent deacon but can’t remarry after ordination.

Many priests are old and nearing retirement, he said, so it makes sense to rely on lay leaders to close the gap.

“They have a rich life experience that they’re bringing to it,” he said of deacons. “I think it adds a lot.”

Patricia Phillips brought a caregiver’s background to her role as parish coordinator. In the early 1970s, she worked as an intensive-care nurse and independent nurse practitioner. She took over the duties of director of health services at St. Joseph’s College in Standish in 1977.

In 1981, she returned to school and graduated from Boston College with a master’s degree in pastoral ministry. After a pastoral internship at the Maine Correctional Center, she was hired in 1983 by St. Dominic’s parish in Portland.

There she worked closely with the parish priest and was given the duties of family life, visitation of the sick and elderly, and social justice.

She was appointed the first parish coordinator in the state in 1995 to serve St. James the Greater Catholic Church in Baileyville. Later, she served as parish coordinator at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Gardiner before returning Down East last year to serve the Lubec parish.

In fulfilling her duties, the parish coordinator is responsible for pastoral care in the parish that includes all administrative duties, such as convening and supervising the parish council. Phillips also leads weekday prayer services in the absence of a priest.

“In practical terms, she fulfills the role of a pastor in the day-to-day running of the parish,” said the Rev. V. Mark Nolette, the priest who serves as sacramental minister at Sacred Heart in Lubec. “Somebody needs to be on-site as the go-to person – the hub of the wheel – so that when priests do come [to the parish] there is a go-between, almost like a missionary kind of model.”

“By joining force, clergy and lay, men and women, the church in a specific [cluster] can be pastorally present to one another and share resources, not only finances, but people,” Phillips said. “With good stewardship, we will be able to effectively minister within and beyond the church.

“For example, at Sacred Heart Church … we believe we are called to develop and nurture a spiritual community based on God’s word through respect, integrity inclusiveness, hospitality and stewardship. We believe this will lead to open doors and open hearts.”

In previous years, small parish communities that might have benefited the most from a parish coordinator have not had the money or an understanding of how such a collaboration should work, she said.

Phillips said she believes that in five years there will be more parish coordinators like herself because of the vision and direction outlined in the bishop’s realignment.

“I know we have many other laymen and women who are currently educated and able to expand their leadership role or assume new positions and do the work that needs to be done,” Phillips said.

“It’s going to take all of us to respond to ministry to get out there and proclaim the kingdom,” she said.