A house built for $2.2 million by the Roman Catholic
Archdiocese of Atlanta will be put up for sale — with
proceeds to be spent on the local Catholic community —
after some parishioners questioned why the mansion was ever
erected, the archbishop announced Saturday.
The mansion, which Archbishop Wilton Gregory had moved in to
early this year, represented a symbol of excess to some
parishioners, he acknowledged this week. And its grandiosity contrasted
with the calls for frugality from those made by Jesus Christ to
those made by “the phenomenon we have come to know as Pope Francis,”
the 66-year-old archbishop said.
After a meeting with church leaders and community members
Saturday, Gregory released a statement declaring his plan to
vacate the residence early next month and then sell it.
The 6,000-square-foot Tudor-style home was built on the
site of a home donated to the archdiocese by the estate of
Joseph Mitchell, whose aunt Margaret Mitchell wrote "Gone
With The Wind." In 2012, Gregory announced a plan to
demolish the original 2,400-square-foot Mitchell home. He then
had the larger structure built to better accommodate church
gatherings.
As part of the plan, the archdiocese is turning the old
$1.9-million archbishop’s residence into a home for
priests from the parish Mitchell had been a member of. Mitchell
had wanted most of the funds to benefit that growing parish,
Cathedral of Christ, which plans to use its own old housing
area for other purposes.
Some parishioners defended the entire plan because of how
generous Gregory has been opening his doors to needy families.
But others said the church should have made do with the
original Mitchell house. The Associated Press reported that the
mansion that was raised in its place has an upper-level safe
room, an eight-burner kitchen stove, an elevator and two dining
rooms.
Gregory wrote this week that though the project made
sense “fiscally, logistically and practically,” he
failed to account for how living in a giant home would be
viewed by families struggling to pay their bills.
“We teach that stewardship is half about what you
give away, and half about how you use what you choose to
keep,” Gregory wrote in the Georgia Bulletin, the
archdiocese newspaper. “I believe that to be true.”
He said options were being explored for where he could
live going forward, but that he won’t be moving back into
the old residence.