South Florida Catholics may learn struggling churches' fates Sunday, when pastors are expected to announce that 14 struggling congregations in the Archdiocese of Miami are on the cutting block and may have to merge with others.

Eight Catholic parishes and six missions and apostolates will merge with other Catholic communities nearby in coming months, said archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta.

''We're looking at finances and a shift in the Catholic population,'' she said.

Agosta said the archdiocese would release names within a week.

Unlike parishes, which serve general Catholic communities with specific boundaries, the missions and apostolates are for specific cultural groups; many serve Haitians. Many conduct Mass and have their own buildings.

There are 117 parishes, three missions and eight apostolates in the archdiocese, which serves 800,000 members in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties.

Churches being merged include those that are financially struggling and receiving subsidies from the archdiocese, and those that have lost membership as Catholics have moved from urban areas to western suburbs.

Agosta said the archdiocese is crunching numbers on church participation based on how many people attend Mass, are baptized, are confirmed and have funerals at specific churches.

Final decisions about the closings will be made in early August, and some of the churches may be spared. ''The archbishop is now beginning a period of consultation with the affected parishes through their pastors,'' read a Q&A posted on the archdiocese website about the closings.

It added: ``One of the advantages is the ethnic groups of the archdiocese will now become part of larger parish communities, which reflects the greater diversity of the Catholic Church in South Florida.''

Many Catholic churches now offer services in Spanish and Creole as well as English.

The note follows a letter from Favalora, read in churches last Sunday, hinting at a broad reorganization in the archdiocese, including other unspecified cutbacks.

In January, the archdiocese announced it would close six struggling Catholic schools, shaving $1.8 million off its budget. Those schools will now reopen in the fall as secular, publicly funded charter schools and will lease school buildings from individual churches.

Agosta said Friday that church buildings left unused because of mergers could also be leased to other groups or become community centers.

Many Catholic dioceses around the country have closed churches in recent years. The Diocese of Cleveland, for instance, announced in March that it would close 52 of its 224 churches next year.

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