Episcopal Press and News

Gulf Coast Parishes, Clergy and Staff Get Help with Financial Issues

Episcopal News Service. September 22, 2005 [092205-02b]

Mary Frances Schjonberg

Hurricane Katrina created an unprecedented set of questions for parishes and diocese in her wake as well as for the national Church.

The Church Pension Group (CPG) is allowing any parish or diocese affected by Katrina to defer making its required payments to the Church Pension Fund and for health and life insurance policies. There is no deadline for resuming those payments at this point, according to Nancy Fisher, CPG senior vice president and director of communications.

As to whether required payments might be waived entirely for a certain period of time, "at this moment they are simply deferred," said Fisher.

The Rev. Pat Coller, CPG senior vice president for pastoral care and education, said, "It's really new territory for us" to consider how to deal with so many parishes whose financial lives have been disrupted simultaneously.

Fisher said about 80 percent of the payments made to retirees and beneficiaries are normally directly deposited in the recipients' bank accounts. Some people may have had trouble accessing that money and others who receive paper checks may not have had a place to receive them, Coller said.

The CPG office has been available to help those retirees and beneficiaries, Coller said. Diocesan staffs have been empowered to write checks on CPG's behalf to any priest or lay employee with the need for funds related to benefit checks, she said.

Ann Ball, director of communication for the Diocese of Louisiana, said Thursday that all clergy and staff in the diocese are being paid. Some parishes have emergency funds for such times, she said. For those who don't, "the bishop is taking care of that" with assistance from CPG and Episcopal Relief and Development.

"We have made contributions to the relief efforts directly to the bishops of the dioceses of Louisiana, Mississippi and the Central Gulf Coast to use at the bishops' discretion during this emergency," Fisher said.