An essential gift” “

A million and a half donors, with an average offering of 130 euros for a total of 195 million euros collected in 2004: 3.83% more than the previous year. These figures, relating to the “denier de l’Église”, the annual contribution requested of the faithful for the upkeep of the French Church, were announced in Paris in recent days by Archbishop LAURENT ULRICH of Chambéry, chairman of the Bishops’ financial Commission and the Council for Economic, Social and Legal Affairs, and by OLIVIER LEBEL , finance director for the French episcopate. At a press conference marking the centenary of the “denier de l’Église”, reported by the French Catholic daily “La Croix”, Monsignor Ulrich said that “for over a century the Church has not received any direct aid either from the State or from the Vatican” and maintains itself thanks to the afore-mentioned “denier”, but “only 10% of the country’s citizens feel bound to pay this voluntary tax”. THE “DENIER DE L’EGLISE” is a direct consequence of the French law of 1905 on the separation between Church and State which, while maintaining religious buildings in state or municipal ownership, suppressed the state payment of stipends for priests. In 1906, also following the appeal of Pius X contained in the encyclical Vehmenter nos, the French dioceses introduced “le denier du clergé”, later re-named “denier du culte” and then (since 1989) “denier de l’Église”: the voluntary contributions used to pay the stipends and pensions of priests (some 20,000) and the salaries of laypeople employed by the Church (some 5,000). The net stipends paid to priests and bishops out of these funds vary from diocese to diocese, but are comprised between 791 and 950 euros, while the monthly salaries paid to laity are of the order of 1000-1100 euros; in many dioceses laypeople now assume various roles formerly performed by priests. In addition the dioceses pay religious congregations about 935 euros per month for the upkeep of nuns. The French Church’s financial commitment is aggravated by the need to maintain real estate that often represents another financial burden. A BATTLE CRY. In 2003, a meeting of thirty diocesan administrators revealed that only the balance sheet of two dioceses, out of the thirty represented, showed a credit. The average losses for the other dioceses amounted to 81,000 euros per year for each. “Today – Lebel observed – the deficit is the daily bread of the dioceses”. And in spite of the fact that there still does not exist any consolidated national book-keeping, on the basis of the data notified by 74 dioceses to the Bishops’ Conference, the situation in 2004 remained critical, so much so as to induce the bishop of Dijon, Roland Minnerath, to lay off eight salaried laypeople. The financial crisis has given rise to a “battle cry” sounded in all dioceses, though in many of them campaigns to inform and raise the awareness of the faithful had already been launched in the previous years. These campaigns, said Lebel during the recent press conference, “are beginning to produce their first positive results”, even though “the financial situation of the local Churches remains precarious”. INFORMATION AND TRANSPARENCY. At Belley-Ars, reports HENRI DE BOISSEAU, diocesan administrator for fifteen years, “the number of donors has progressively declined by 37%, but the amount of offerings grew from 60 to 126 euros per person”. The objective of the diocese of Auch, explains its administrator OLIVIER LEFORT, is to “find each year new donors to compensate for the 500 that are annually lost; last year we lost as many as 1,200 contributors and donations fell by 3%”. How are funds collected? PAUL ROUSSEL, 66 years old, co-ordinates a group of 80 volunteer “fund collectors” in the parish of Merville. Each of them carries out visits to the homes of parishioners to explain to them the reasons and objectives of the request for funds; he leaves an envelope and returns in a few days time to pick it up. The method has produced results: almost 25% of the parishioners visited make an offering. At Amiens, too, parishioners were contacted by a mail shot explaining the reasons for the collection of funds; the campaign led to an increase of donations in 45 of the diocese’s 49 parishes. Transparency seems to be the winning card: “Explaining, justifying, being clear: we live in a society in which donors are often saturated with requests”, admits LAURENT CHARIGNON, administrator of the diocese of Lyon, who this year coined the slogan: “You can’t give to everyone, but for a Catholic certain donations are essential”. Bishop Ulrich shares this view, and listed humanitarian causes and disaster relief as the main occasion for the collection of funds; such operations, he admitted, are simpler, because “they make an emotional appeal”, whereas campaigns for the support of the Church “depend on a more sober, rational and continuous generosity, which is far more difficult” for a project that is “less spectacular and media-hyped, but essential to ensure the long-term survival of this institution”.