This article is from page 2 of the 2007-10-23 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
The Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, has raised the possibility of a sell-off of Church-owned lands across the diocese, though stressed that there will be no sudden sale.
Dr Walsh has revealed that he has initiated a consultation amongst the diocese’s priests, a diocesan pastoral council and “asked a small sub-com- mittee to look at that whole issue of how do we apply Gospel values to our property and whatever finance we may have available to us”.
After confirming that the diocese had donated 15 acres of land for the
development of a daycare centre and housing for the elderly in Ennis, Dr Walsh said that the Church “is not in the business of profit-making”.
After giving away lands valued at €10 million to provide services for Ennis’s elderly population, Dr Walsh said, “I am perfectly sure that the Church holding a lot of land for itself is not in any way part of the Gospel.
“What I’m sure of is that it has an obligation to act responsibly. We are not going to be disposing of all the property suddenly.
“There is the whole question of the employment of lay people in our Church with the diminishing number
of priests.
“We have already increased the number of lay people, but there will be more lay people employed by the Church. Some of the finance needed for that will be got from the sale of some property.
“It was a past generation that passed this land onto us. We have an obliga- tions to future generations to in some way pass on some of that property to future generations.
“At the moment, the discussions are in initial stages, but I would visualise that it would be ongoing and these people would be regularly asked for their views and those views would be
fed into the diocesan trust who are ultimately responsible for decision- making in this area.
“One would need the wisdom of Solomon in some ways to be sure to know what to do in particular situ- ations.
“I haven’t a fully formed view of the long term and I would prefer to wait and let people mull over these things, discuss them and look at the continuing needs of the diocese.
“If someone 20 years ago decided to sell off all the property, we would have a serious difficulty in employ- ing more people nowadays,’ Bishop Walsh added.