An item in the Tonawanda News dealing primarily with donations in the Diocese of Buffalo also has something of interest for those of us in DOR.
Doug Mandelaro, spokesman for the Rochester Diocese, said for the 2007-08 budget term, the area’s 130 churches collected $45.1 million via collection plates, up $977,000 from the previous year...
One of the largest parishes there, St. Joseph’s, in Pennfield, N.Y., contributed $1.2 million that year and that church’s pastor, the Rev. Jim Schwartz said he doesn’t see any slowing down despite companies like Kodak and Xerox cutting jobs.
Perhaps that’s because the 2,579 families who go there can attend mass every day of the year, including five on weekends.
The Rochester Diocese’s annual appeal, however, was down as much as 10 percent, or just less than $5 million.
St. Joseph's and other parishes that got to keep their schools might be doing okay, but from what I hear that's not the case at many parishes that lost their schools last year.
Holy Cross, for instance, will see something like a $28,000 budget shortfall this year unless the Sunday collections pick up dramatically over the next 5 months.
2 comments:
Hi Mike,
This is really surprising to me since our church is looking at a $20,000 deficit too. And we're in a pretty affluent area. But the collections are off almost every week.
I've heard of similar struggles at other area churches.
The spin machine seems to be working fine.
~Dr. K
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