‘BUYER BEWARE’ WHEN BUYING CHURCH PROPERTIES
The Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Antigonish has had quite a number of properties up for sale for a number of years to help pay the Nova Scotia court imposed fines which they incurred resulting from the abuse of children by certain members of the clergy. A number of those properties have been put up for sale and some have been sold in my own St. Barra Parish.
People are attracted to these properties to use as a vacation summer home or as a retirement cottage site. As some are on the beautiful Bras d’Or Lake, they are considered valuable investments.
The sacred Canon Law of the church tells us that parish communities of the Christian faithful own their own properties and the parish has the autonomous right to buy or sell and administrate its own assets as a separate legal entity. The diocesan administration is also, as a governing body, a separate legal entity and they have their own separate assets and liabilities. Parish assets are not allowed to be used for the benefit of any other parish or to cross county lines as is stated in the act of incorporation of the Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Antigonish, 1909, Section 5.
The Diocese of Antigonish has taken many hundreds of thousands of dollars in parish assets to pay for their debt. This lowers a parish’s net worth and leaves many parishes struggling to maintain their church structures.
Upon the sale of a parish asset, parishes are given first option to buy back what their parish community already owns and very few parishioners realize they have so much equitable interest in their parish properties that they invest in, over many years, that they could make a civil claim against any sale of a parish asset.
Selling property to benefit a parish from the revenue that is generated is one thing, but selling millions of dollars in buildings and land is not the mandate of the diocese and one example in Christmas Island clearly illustrates this point.
Our Christmas Island school property was to be returned to the Parish of St. Barra after it was closed. A quitclaim deed was received by the Catholic corporation in 2017 from the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board, but the diocese claimed the property and didn’t return it to St. Barra Parish, even though it is land locked by St. Barra Parish land from whence it came. The property was assessed at $199,100.
The diocese put the property up for sale for $22,000 and eventually sold their interest in it for an even lower price. The diocese had neighbouring property lines altered and added a right of way and a water easement to the 2019 deed given to the property buyer.
None of the neighbouring landowners were aware of these line alterings, rightof-way, or easement agreements. The land was sold, “where is, as is.”
Anyone who is attracted to a low price on any of these properties should consider the old adage, “buyer beware.”
Many of these church properties were formerly acquired with warranty deeds from the neighbouring landowners that guaranteed inherited deed trust rights.
The diocese is making up deeds for these properties that only state that no one that occupied a matrimonial home in the Catholic corporation ever owned this property.
If a proper migration had been done, it would have revealed the actual historical information of the former landowners and their inherited right, as is required by law.
A new owner of one of these properties, or their descendants, may find themselves in the future in a situation where they have to defend their property rights and they may also find that they are holding a deed that doesn’t fully guarantee these rights.
Hopefully this doesn’t happen to you. Barry J. George
Christmas Island