The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
CHURCH
second break.
Religious groups persuaded the Trump administration to free them from a rule that typically disqualifies an applicant with more than 500 workers. Without this preferential treatment, many Catholic dioceses would have been ineligible because — between their head offices, parishes and other affiliates — their employees exceed the 500person cap.
“The government grants special dispensation, and that creates a kind of structural favoritism,” said Micah Schwartzman, a University of Virginia law professor specializing in constitutional issues and religion who has studied the Paycheck Protection Program. “And that favoritism was worth billions of dollars.”
The amount that the church collected, between $1.4 billion and $3.5 billion, is an undercount. The Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference, an organization of Catholic financial officers, surveyed members and reported that about 9,000 Catholic entities received loans. That is nearly three times the number of Catholic recipients the AP could identify.
The AP couldn’t find more Catholic beneficiaries because the government’s data, released after pressure from Congress and a lawsuit from news outlets including the AP, didn’t name recipients of loans under $150,000 — a category in which many smaller churches would fall. And because the government released only ranges of loan amounts, it wasn’t possible to be more precise.
Even without a full accounting, AP’s analysis places the Catholic Church among the major beneficiaries in the Paycheck Protection Program, which also has helped companies backed by celebrities, billionaires, state governors and members of Congress.
The program was open to all religious groups, and many took advantage. Evangelical advisers to President Donald Trump, including his White House spiritual czar, Paula White-Cain, also received loans.
There is no doubt that state shelter-in-place orders disrupted houses of worship and businesses alike.
Masses were canceled, even during the Holy Week and Easter holidays, depriving parishes of expected revenue and contributing to layoffs in some dioceses. Some families of Catholic school students are struggling to make tuition payments. And the expense of disinfecting classrooms once classes resume will put additional pressure on budgets.
But other problems were self-inflicted. Long before the pandemic, scores of dioceses faced increasing financial pressure because of a dramatic rise in recent clergy sex abuse claims.
The scandals that erupted in 2018 reverberated throughout the world. Pope Francis ordered the former archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, to a life of “prayer and penance” following allegations he abused minors and adult seminarians. And a damning grand jury report about abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses revealed bishops had long covered for predator priests, spurring investigations in more than 20 other states.
As the church again reckoned with its longtime crisis, abuse reports tripled during the year ending June 2019 to a total of nearly 4,500 nationally. Meanwhile, dioceses and religious orders shelled out $282 million that year — up from $106 million just five years earlier. Most of that went to settlements, in addition to legal fees and support for offending clergy.
Loan recipients included about 40 dioceses that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years paying victims through compensation funds or bankruptcy proceedings. AP’s review found that these dioceses were approved for about $200 million, though the value is likely much higher.
One was the New York Archdiocese. As a successful battle to lift the statute of limitations on the filing of child sexual abuse lawsuits gathered steam, Cardinal Timothy Dolan established a victim compensation fund in 2016. Since then, other dioceses have established similar funds, which offer victims relatively quick settlements while dissuading them from filing lawsuits.
Spokesperson Joseph Zwilling said the archdiocese simply wanted to be “treated equally and fairly under the law.” When asked about the waiver from the 500-employee cap that religious organizations received, Zwilling deferred to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Archbishop Jose H. Gomez gives a blessing after leading a brief liturgy at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles in May. Federal lobbying records show Gomez, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, paid a firm $20,000 to lobby the U.S. Senate and House on “eligibility for nonprofits” under the CARES Act in 2020.
A video display shows photos and the logo for Mary's Place, a family homeless shelter located inside an Amazon corporate building on the tech giant's Seattle campus, on June 17. The shelter marks a major civic contribution bestowed by Amazon to the hometown it has rapidly transformed.
the most expensive and controversial demographic to address.
Companies like Amazon could virtually eliminate Seattle’s tent cities if they helped fund more permanent affordable housing with social services managers to support those struggling the most, Rankin said.
Amazon notes it gave $6.6 million last year to Plymouth Housing, a local nonprofit trying to raise $75 million to build such programs.
Amazon’s real estate chief John Schoettler said the partnership between the company and Mary’s Place began when Amazon’s massive expansion of office space led it to acquire a former Travelodge hotel. Amazon in 2016 gifted it to Mary’s Place for one year while the company prepared to demolish and construct an office building. It later decided to give the nonprofit half of the new building permanently.
Yet to some local critics, the move was seen as too little, too late. Amazon and Bezos had long been accused of not being nearly as generous as other corporate giants in the region, such as Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates, the world’s most high-profile philanthropist.
The globally focused Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has for years given to homelessness initiatives in the Seattle area. One of Gates’ first projects when the foundation started in 2000 was funding a $40 million family homelessness initiative that built more than 1,400 units of transitional housing in the region.
Meanwhile, Bezos’ wealth has funded high-profile side ventures including the space exploration company Blue Origin and The Washington Post newspaper.
Bezos this year also launched his personal $10 billion commitment to fight climate change called the Bezos Earth Fund, his largest donation to date. Amazon then bought the naming rights to a Seattle sports venue and officially renamed it “Climate Pledge Arena.” It’s a nod to the company’s push to get other companies to join it in being carbon neutral by 2040 and marks another unorthodox and unsubtle philanthropic gesture. Amazon’s growing portfolio of civic interests also includes funding a restaurant job training program and various school and educational causes.