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The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing enormous financial uncertainty due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and this was now becoming a threat to its very existence on the island, said the co-founder of the Association of Catholic Priests.
Killala priest Father Brendan Hoban said church revenues were “in free fall, and will (apparently) be for some time.”
Church collections were “the staple of parish life” and restrictions imposed due to the pandemic were having a drastic effect on them, he said.
In the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, revenue from collections fell about 80 percent when churches closed last March, a spokeswoman said. Since the churches reopened last June, “anecdotally there is a modest improvement in collections, but obviously with a reduced number allowed at Mass, it remains a very significant challenge,” she said.
Two streams of donations, the collection of the “common fund” for priests and the “support to actions” fund, were reduced by 70 and 80 percent respectively in Dublin between March and June compared to the same period of the year. past.
Fr Hoban said that from the early 1800s Catholic priests in Ireland were “directly dependent on the people for their income,” as was “the provision of a parish infrastructure” such as chapels and priests’ houses.
Pillar
“That is why collections are a pillar of parish life, the life blood of local parishes. Without them, Catholic life, as we have it, would disappear, ”he said.
There was “a strange belief around for years that the Catholic Church has a lot of money.”
“This is a persistent fallacy, beloved by critics of the Church, although it is obvious that without church collections there is no other form of income available. The Catholic Church is as rich as its followers are generous, neither more nor less, ”she said.
“Today, because people’s gatherings are strictly regulated by government edicts, only a small percentage of Catholics can attend weekly Mass, the site of most collections. An even smaller percentage attend, as fear of contracting the virus has deterred many who used to attend and contributed. The result is that the income of the Catholic Church is now in free fall, and will be (apparently) for some time, ”he said.
The fear now was that “while religious practice had declined significantly in recent years (for a variety of reasons), the pandemic may be what is causing that decline to spiral out of control” and “the public profile of the Church may diminish to the point of virtual invisibility, “he said in his current Western People column.
Redundancy
In the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, the income of priests fell by 25 percent in the early stages of the pandemic and when churches were closed.
A voluntary layoff plan for the 82 staff members in diocesan support services and parish pastoral workers was introduced over the summer in the hope that a third of the staff would be able to participate. I was oversubscribed.
The spokeswoman said the archdiocese had “exceeded the number of people it had anticipated to take on the voluntary layoff plan; staff leaving will do so in stages between now and the end of December; a final figure will not be clear until then.”
Meanwhile, Crosscare, the archdiocese’s social services agency, has started consultations with staff and union representatives on reducing the employer pension contribution rate with a view to reducing spending in that area.
The spokesperson said that “to meet outstanding defined benefit commitments, a recent actuarial valuation project recommended a future contribution rate of € 520,000 per year.” This was “proving challenging in the current climate.”
He said that “cumulative reductions in funding amounted to 1.4 million euros in recent years” at Crosscare. He also said that “increases were expected to be paid early this year, but the current economic climate after the pandemic has meant that this will not be possible in the short term.”
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