An American archbishop has bowed to pressure from his flock against plans for building a US$2.2million, 575 square metre mansion.
Altanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory has apologised to Catholics in his archdiocese for failing to consider the pastoral implications of his plans.
He regretted the impression his new home sent to Catholics in his area who give to the Church while struggling to pay their own bills.
The example he set for following Jesus’ was also not adequate, he acknowledged.
Archbishop Gregory will meet with his various councils for guidance; if they advise him to sell the home, he will seek a new residence elsewhere.
While the project could be justified financially, logistically and practically, these reasons were not sufficient, he wrote.
“What we didn’t stop to consider, and that oversight rests with me and me alone, was that the world and the Church have changed,” he wrote in his archdiocesan newspaper.
Pope Francis has called for a Church which is poor and is for the poor.
Archbishop Gregory wrote that the example of Pope Francis has “set the bar for every Catholic and even for many who don’t share our communion”.
In the US state of New Jersey, building plans for residences of two Catholic bishops are under fire from laity as being too lavish.
“Francis has very definitely sent out a signal, and the signal is that bishops should live like the people they pastor, and they shouldn’t be in palaces,” British papal biographer Paul Vallely told The New York Times.
“Where people are historically in that kind of accommodation it is one thing, but where people are building it, it looks extravagant,” he said.
Archbishop Gregory’s residence plans came after a multi-million dollar bequest from Joseph Mitchell, the nephew of “Gone with the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell.
Last month, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of German Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, better known as the “bishop of bling.”
Bishop Tebartz-van Elst drew scrutiny of his own for renovation and building projects in his Limburg diocese estimated at US$40 million.
Sources