The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston reported yesterday thatit balanced its $29.8 million budget last year for the first timesince Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley arrived in 2003, as church leaderssaid they are making progress in addressing financial concernscreated by a sour economy and the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
Regular collections from parishioners held steady, despite thesluggish economy. Investment income increased. And a new financialsystem, designed to help parishes raise more money and share it withthe archdiocese, was off to a promising start.
Still, the annual report suggests that significant financialchallenges remain. One-third of parishes are operating in the red,the same proportion as in fiscal 2009. Contributions to thearchdiocese's annual fund-raising drive, the Catholic Appeal, weredown 14 percent last year from the year before. And many parisheshad to cut spending to stay solvent.
The Rev. Richard M. Erikson, vicar general of the archdiocese,said the balanced budget was an important achievement and that whilethe archdiocese faces a host of difficulties, financial andotherwise, it is working on many fronts to find solutions. It haslaunched a campaign aimed at bringing inactive Catholics back tochurch, for example, and it is studying ways to cope with a severeshortage of priests.
"That type of focus was not possible several years ago, when thediocese was doing crisis management," Erikson said.
Mass attendance was up slightly, 2.6 percent, in 2010. It was thefirst time the annual parishioner count, taken on one Sunday eachOctober, had increased since 2004.
Although enrollment in Catholic schools dropped by almost 2percent in the current school year, the decline was smaller than ithad been in the 2009-10 school year.
The report is posted on www.bostoncatholic.org, the archdiocese'swebsite, for the year that ended June 30. The archdiocese releasesreports annually as part of a commitment to greater transparencyfollowing the sexual abuse crisis.
The archdiocese trimmed its expenses, laying off 11 employees andleaving nine other positions unfilled.
Archdiocesan employees received no cost-of-living raise for thefourth year in a row.
But the archdiocese's highest-paid officials, those earning morethan $100,000 a year, saw salary reductions imposed last yearrestored. The archdiocese provided a much fuller disclosure of topsalaries this year than in years past.
Mary Grassa O'Neill, secretary for education and the highest-paid archdiocesan official, earned $320,000 last year. Twentyofficials earned more than $100,000, four of whom took home morethan $200,000, according to the report.
Erikson said O'Malley has tried to attract top talent to thearchdiocese, which carries a cost.
"It's an investment that the cardinal is happy to make, and thefruits of that investment are seen in all aspects of our operation,"he said.
Most other top archdiocesan officials are clergy or members ofreligious orders who earn about $40,000 a year or less. O'Malley'ssalary was about $41,000, $34,000 of which was paid to his order,the Capuchin Priests and Brothers, and $7,200 to the Cathedral ofthe Holy Cross for his housing.
The archdiocese is also in the process of establishing acompensation committee to review general pay practices and specificsalaries of highly paid employees.
And it has hired EthicsPoint Inc. to host a telephone bank andInternet site so that employees can confidentially report violationsof the archdiocese's code of conduct and conflict- of-interestpolicy.
James P. McDonough, chancellor of the archdiocese, said thosemoves are "simply adopting the best practices, as we see them, inthe nonprofit world and in the corporate world."
The archdiocese said it settled 30 sexual abuse cases in fiscal2010, three more than the year before, and spent $2.1 million onsettlements with victims.
To date, the Archdiocese of Boston has spent $147 millionsettling 1,127 sexual abuse cases; 49 are pending.
The church's pension funds remain underfunded, but both the layretirement fund and the clergy retirement fund saw improvements.
The lay pension fund, which the church is in the process offreezing as it moves to a 401(k)-style plan was 78.1 percent fundedon June 30, up from 74.6 percent the year before.
The clergy retirement fund expects to finish the year with $31million in assets. Projected liabilities amount to more than $100million.
But contributions to the fund in two annual collections atChristmas and Easter and a large fund-raising dinner held for thefirst time last year rose by more than $3 million, allowing thechurch to fully pay for retired priests' expenses without furtherdepleting the clergy retirement fund, officials said.
McDonough said he was particularly heartened by results of apilot program designed to stabilize the archdiocese's finances andreplace a confusing patchwork of taxes and fees on parishes with asimpler model in which all parishes contribute to the archdiocese 18percent of their weekly offertory, major fund-raising driveproceeds, and net rental income.
Parishes in the pilot program were urged to step up their fund-raising in a variety of ways. In the 33 parishes that volunteered,contributions increased 17 percent, on average, in the first quarterof 2011, according to yesterday's report. Forty-four parishes havesigned up for the next round of the program.
"They're doing more to help us, and we're doing more to helpthem," McDonough said.
Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.
15archdiocese.ART
No comments:
Post a Comment