Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney controls $1.2bn, royal commission hears

By Dan Box
Australian
March 25, 2014

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/catholic-archdiocese-of-sydney-controls-12bn-royal-commission-hears/story-fngburq5-1226864352879

Cardinal George Pell controlled church funds worth nearly $100m when he was Sydney archbishop, an inquiry has heard. Photo by Nikki Short

THE Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney controls funds with combined assets of over $1.2 billion dollars that provide the church with multi-million dollar profits every year, the royal commission has heard.

The evidence, tendered to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse this morning, represents the first time the books of Australia’s wealthiest church organisation have been made public.

Daniel Casey, the archdiocese’s business manager, said the funds were “ultimately owned and controlled by, if you like, the archbishop of the day ... the archbishop controls these funds.”

Most of the money is controlled by two funds, the commission heard, the Catholic Development Fund and the Procuration Fund, which last year held gross assets of $810 million and $426 million respectively.

Most of these assets represented property owned by the church, which had been valued at cost and would be higher if valued at the market rate, the commission heard, although the Catholic Development Fund also holds over $0.3bn in cash.

The archdiocese’s net assets for 2013 stood at $192m, a figure which has almost doubled since 2001, when Cardinal George Pell became archbishop, and it turned a surplus of over $9m for the year.

Compensation and other payouts to the victims of sexual abuse were met from the Procuration Fund, Mr Casey said, with the archdiocese spending a total of about $9.4m on all those victims who had approached it to date.

Mr Casey described the development fund as “an internal treasury” for the church.

“What it does is in fact keep the margin on retail deposits and the margin on loans within the church and uses that surplus to provide support to the works of the church,” he said.

“To a lawyer, it sounds like a bank,” commission chair, Justice Peter McClellan, replied.