Church finances drying up

The money reserves of the Maltese Church were running out and would be depleted within a year, the Curia’s administrative secretary said yesterday.

The deficit last year stood at €869,555, lower than the €1 million shortfall of 2008.

“Few seem to understand that Church activities such as the Pastoral Formation Institute, the Seminary and catechist training have a financial cost,” Mgr Anton Portelli, the administrative secretary said. Such activities did not render an income and were subsidised, with sums that were “not insignificant”.

“The difficulty is that the reserve we had over the years is about to finish and we foresee that we’re going to have huge problems to meet expenses.”

The Church uses central funds to subsidise the running of essential institutions within it, such as the Seminary and homes, including Dar tal-Providenza, in Siġġiewi which last year alone was €486,000 in the red.

“We don’t want to stop our activities, which are essential to the calling of the Church. We’re sure people will offer their help, be it time or money, once they realise what the situation is like,” Mgr Portelli said at the Curia’s offices in Floriana when the pastoral and financial report for 2009 was presented.

The report did not cover religious congregations, lay societies like the Christian doctrine society, known as MUSEUM or Church schools, because, financially, these are run independently of the Church.

Revenue grew by over €1 million when compared to 2008 but there was a rise of over €1million in the bills the Church had to foot.

The largest expenses the Church incurred were to pay its 1,000-strong dependents; a total €12 million last year.

Parish priests and vice-parish priests, the Curia said, were paid the equivalent of scale 13 and 14 of the civil service, which placed their salaries in the €12,131 to €14,961 bracket. This money came from a special clergy fund, which covered 70 per cent of the priests’ salaries. The rest had to come from the Church’s finance department after the clergy fund went under by €485,000.

The Church media operations ended with a €45,231 deficit. This included two TV programmes, websites and the newsletter Flimkien.

Parishes across Malta had an overall income of €6.9 million and ended up with a balance of €242,907. The government provided €2.2 million to subsidise the Church’s work among drug addicts and for the Seminary.

Money collected in parishes last year was slightly higher than in 2008, with €4.5 million being collected, for which “the Church is extremely grateful”.

The overall balance, however, taking into account operational costs, was 52 per cent below that of the previous year.

Asked how the Church saw this in the light of the gospel, pastoral secretary, Mgr Charles Cordina, said: “We believe in providence because we believe (God) stays with us. But we also believe God works through other people, to whom we are grateful for the help.

“What we do is not for money, it is in our nature as a Church to do this because Christ taught us to keep humanity at the centre of our mission... Obviously, we need to operate in some way and for this we need to pay. Christians need to understand that everything comes at a cost,” he said.

Mgr Cordina added that in activities such as the national Christ the King celebrations, which cost about €10,000, the collection during Mass would not even cover the €1.30 rental of each chair people were sitting on.

All those who “hold the Church close to their hearts” have been invited to send their ideas, suggestions and advice to rapport@maltadiocese.org.

The report can be viewed online at www.maltadiocese.org.