Boston, USA - The Vatican has said the Archdiocese of Boston may not seize the assets of dozens of closed churches and must ask each pastor to voluntarily turn over millions of dollars in bank accounts and real estate holdings.
To date, Archbishop Sean O'Malley has closed more than 60 churches, claiming their financial assets and selling off much of the real estate. The archdiocese has said throughout the process that the resources of the closed parishes should be pooled to help all Boston-area churches.
The archdiocese, still reeling from the multimillion settlements paid to victims of clergy sexual abuse, has said the reconfiguration of parishes is vital to its financial survival.
Church leaders said the Vatican's position was communicated verbally to archdiocesan officials at a series of meetings in Rome over the past several months.
Critics of the parish closings say the archdiocese has botched the process and is violating church and civil law by taking what could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars in cash donations and real estate funded by generations of Catholics.
The position of the Vatican, which is considering the appeals of eight churches slated for closure, appears to side with parishioners who have argued in court filings and in their appeals to the Holy See that they control the assets of their parishes.
"You have generations of donors whose intention was to help support the parishes that they were in," said Steve Krueger, former executive director of the lay reform group Voice of the Faithful and an adviser to some of the closed parishes. "What's going to happen to those hundreds of millions of dollars?"
O'Malley said Wednesday that the Vatican has been generally supportive of how the closings have been handled.
"Now we need more conversations to clarify our differences on what is the best procedure to attain those goals," he told reporters. "When all is said and done, I feel confident that what we've set out to do will be achieved."
The archdiocese said one pastor has already agreed to turn over his parish's financial assets, and they are optimistic that others will follow.
Archdiocesan officials also believe the Vatican's position on the financial assets may only affect the eight parishes that have appealed their closings - in Belmont, Brookline, Natick, Quincy, Revere, Scituate, Sudbury and Wellesley.
The Rev. Mark O'Connell, the archdiocese's chief canon lawyer, has been meeting with the pastors and finance councils of churches that have absorbed some of the closing parishes. He told them that they can seek money to cover the expense of accepting new parishioners, but requested that they then sign over the remaining assets of the closed parishes to the archdiocese.
If the pastors decline to hand the money over to the archdiocese, the archdiocese could appeal to a Vatican panel called the Apostolic Signatura.