” “One and a half million donors, with an average of 130 euros per donation, a total of 195 million euros raised in 2004; 3.83% more than the previous year. These figures concerning the “denier de l’Église”, the yearly contribution asked to the devotees for the keep of the French Church, were published yesterday in Paris by mgr. Laurent Ulrich, archbishop of Chambéry and president of the Bishops’ Financial Conference, and by Olivier Lebel, finance manager of the French Episcopate. At a press conference organised for the hundredth anniversary of the “denier de l’Église”, which will be the subject of a report on today’s SirEuropa (old.agensir.it), mgr. Ulrich stated that “for over one century, the Church has received no direct subsidies either from the Government or from the Vatican” and supports itself with said “denier”, but “just 10% of the country’s Catholics feel they owe this voluntary tax”. The “denier de l’Église” is a consequence of the suppression of the priests’ wages, which was laid down by the 1905 Act on the separation between the Church and the State and was established in 1906 by the dioceses. Today, it is used to pay the wages and pensions of the priests (about 20 thousand) and the remunerations of the wage-earning laymen (about 5 thousand). To raise the awareness of the congregation about such need, for years the dioceses have organised information campaigns which, noted Lebel, “are beginning to produce the first results”, even if “the financial balance of the dioceses remains unstable”. Hence mgr. Ulrich’s appeal to “a reasoned and stable generosity to ensure the permanence of the Church over time “.
