The Catholic Church is on the precipice of another failure almost as shameful, in its own way, as the decades of rampant child molestation and cover-up efforts. A glut of priests, brothers, and nuns is hitting retirement age without adequate finances to sustain them through the vulnerable final chapter of this earthly life.
By 2030, there will be an estimated $9.6 billion gap in available funds and how much it will cost to care for the retired religious, according to a Mercer University study.
We’re beginning to see the toll. Nuns and brothers are winding up in public nursing homes and, locally, the Sisters of St. Joseph in Springfield are seeking donations to sustain the women in retirement.
It’s a shame that thousands of people who dedicated their lives to helping the poor and sick, as well as children and families, have to struggle in retirement.
And it’s an abomination that this is happening to people who devoted their lives in service to what may be the richest institution on the planet. The Catholic Church should put up the money to allow its retired religious to age comfortably instead of shifting this responsibility to elderly men and women and the community at large.
The Catholic Church is filthy rich. That’s due not only to the millions of congregants who drop money into collection plates and leave sizable estates to the church, but also to the nuns and priests who swore vows of poverty.
It’s hard to pin down exactly how wealthy the Catholic Church is. Countries have various methods of documenting religious organizations’ finances. In the U.S., we don’t require many records from the institutions.
While we may never be able to quantify the church’s riches, we do have an idea how much it spends. In 2012, an investigation by the Economist found that the Catholic Church spends about $170 billion annually in the U.S. Most of this money goes to operating church-affiliated hospitals and schools. About $11 billion goes to parishes. For comparison, in 2012, the largest company in the U.S., Cargill, made $135 billion in revenue; the second largest, Koch Industries, earned $115 billion. Typically, a company doesn’t spend more than it takes in.
Keep in mind $170 billion is only how much the church — with 1.2 billion followers worldwide — dropped in the U.S. that year.
The church can afford to care for the people who have given their lives to serve it.
Limited cash for retirement has always been the deal for the religious who dedicate themselves to poverty, obedience, and chastity. They don’t earn a lot during their working years and nearly all of that money is given to the order anyway. The retirement benefits provided by the church are scant to nonexistent and there are few religious retirement homes available. In the Catholic Church, each religious institution is responsible for financially supporting itself — which is why you can buy things like artisanal cheesecakes and brews from religious orders seeking to make ends meet.
Until recently, though, this system mostly worked. That’s because for centuries a fresh batch of young sisters and brothers were ready to step in to do the work and provide for their ailing colleagues. But people aren’t taking up religious vocations the way they used to. The number of nuns, for example, has dropped by more than 70 percent since the 1960s, from 180,000 to 50,000 in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center. The number of priests has also declined, though not so dramatically, going from 58,000 to 38,000 over the same time period.
To help the growing challenge of retiring religious women and men, the Retirement Fund for Religious was established in 1986 by the National Religious Retirement Office, a nonprofit supported by other Catholic religious associations.
By 2024 it is projected that those who are religious and over the age of 70 will outnumber their younger colleagues by a ratio of four to one, the retirement office reports.
Also exacerbating the retirement crush is the high cost of health care. Nuns, brothers, and priests used to be able to rely on pro bono or discounted health services, but not so much anymore, according to the office.
In 2013, the most recent year for which information is available, American dioceses contributed $24 million to the Religious Retirement Fund, the primary source of retirement benefits for nuns, priests, and brothers. The group collected $4 million in other donations and income on investments. About $23 million was disbursed to 424 religious communities, with the average award per person coming in at a little over $1,000. A thousand dollars isn’t even enough to cover all the prescribed medicines the average 70-year-old takes in a year, according to Families USA, an advocacy group that lobbies for universal health care.
People who dedicate their lives to the service of others shouldn’t have to wonder whether anyone will take care of them in old age, especially when their Vatican bosses live in a palace atop of a stack of invaluable artwork and a literal pile of gold. The Catholic Church needs to ensure the religious are cared for in retirement by providing financial support instead of relying on cheesecake profits and donations to sustain the elderly.•
Contact Kristin Palpini at editor@valleyadvocate.com.
