18 Newfoundland Churches for Sale in St. John's Bankruptcy

The Pillar ^ | 5/9/22

[marshmallow]

Nearly 20 parish churches on the eastern edge of North America face the prospect of closure, as the properties have gone up for sale in bankruptcy proceedings for the Archdiocese of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

The parish church properties - at 18 of the 34 parishes in the archdiocese - were included in a March notice of sale, part of an effort to resolve an archdiocesan bankruptcy filing and a court order to compensate victims of sexual abuse at a closed Catholic orphanage in Newfoundland.

The Newfoundland archdiocese was in 2021 found liable for a religious community which operated Mount Cashel, a notoriously abusive orphanage in the archdiocese that closed in 1990. After it became responsible to compensate more 100 men sexually abused at the orphanage in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2021 — compensation claims were expected to exceed $50 million CAD.

In the Church’s canon law, parishes are regarded as separate legal entities from the archdiocese which governs them, and their property - including the parish church - is regarded as distinct from archdiocesan assets. But parish properties in Newfoundland are civilly owned by the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John’s, and thus eligible for liquidation in the archdiocesan bankruptcy.

[keving]

This is the salvation for all the liberals who wanna leave the US and still live in a weight country with English as their language. Because let’s face it they’re lazy and won’t learn someone else’s language. Maybe they can make a mess a B&B?

[Chickensoup]

Marxist win again

[Mr. Lucky]

I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say.

[dangus]

I could certainly concoct a legal theory for how the diocese is financially liable for its parishes. But the very purpose of religious communities is that they are independent of and even pretty much untouchable by the diocese.

No, seriously. In ancient time, dioceses were often heavily under the influence of kings who appointed bishops. Diocesan priests are even historically called, “secular priests.” Religious orders were typically far more independent. Hence, during the Reformation under Henry VIII, the secular priests simply flopped over to Protestantism, but the religious orders had to be slaughtered and their holdings seized by the state.

This isn’t a mere historical matter. For instance, the Church is very divided over the issue of alleged apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Yugoslavia, now Bosnia. The Bishop, widely understood to be a puppet of the genocidal fanatic communist regime, disapproved the apparitions as counter-revolutionary nonsense, but the religious order whose Church the visionaries attended, claimed it was authentic, and the diocese and religious order have been fighting ever since.