Roman Catholics in a community are to lose their place of worship.

Catholic residents of Hemlington, near Middlesbrough, have attended Sunday mass at the St John of God Pastoral Centre in Hemlington for the past ten years.

But the building is to be closed and put up for sale by the order of monks running it because it does not make a profit and it is under-used.

Hemlington is part of the Cathedral parish centred on the Roman Catholic cathedral at neighbouring Coulby Newham.

Cathedral Dean, Monsignor Ricardo Morgan, who announced news of the planned closure from the pulpit on Sunday, said: "Our priority as a parish must be to calmly but quickly consider the way forward, and I am sure that by working together and thinking this challenge through, we will be able to find a new way of providing Sunday Mass for the people in the Hemlington area of the parish."

Brother John Martin, of the Order of St John of God, said: "The pastoral centre has run a significant deficit each year since it opened and despite trying a number of new strategies to reach a break-even point, we have never achieved this.

"Over the last few years, a number of other community facilities have been developed in Hemlington, which indicate that the pastoral centre will continue to be under-used so the Order can no longer sustain the work.

"The closure of the pastoral centre should be seen as part of a wider redevelopment of the work or the Order in this country."

The Right Reverend John Crowley, Bishop of Middlesbrough, said he regretted the decision to close the centre, but understood the reasons, and appreciated the work monks of the Order had done in Hemlington during the past decade.

The Bishop said: "People may ask if the diocese of Middlesbrough could consider buying the pastoral centre, but the diocese is facing many challenges with limited financial resources, so it would be irresponsible to acquire and then try to run a project which the brothers themselves with all the goodwill in the world have not finally been able to sustain."

A date for the closure of the centre is yet to be announced.