The Lord will provide…

On the first day (Monday), the Curia released its financial reports for 2010: revealing that its budget deficit had almost doubled from €869,000 to €1.7 million in one year, in part due to expenses related to Pope Benedict’s visit in April that year.

And on the third day (Wednesday), the same Curia launched a media campaign to raise awareness of a number of new investments and projects dotted around the island: one of which, a new primary school in Tal-Virtu, involved a total expenditure of €8 million.

Is this a modern-day retelling of the ‘miracle of the loaves and fishes’? Perhaps, but the Curia itself is nonetheless unswerving in its belief that such miracles can and do happen. During last Friday’s media tour of the newly inaugurated Tal-Virtu school, I found a quiet moment to ask the Curia’s pastoral secretary, Mgr Charles Cordina, to comment on his own admission that the Church is facing unprecedented financial problems.

With refreshing bluntness, he freely admitted that this week’s media blitz was aimed precisely at impressing upon the faithful the need for greater generosity in these financially challenging times.

And he is confident that the public will respond in kind, too.

“I believe in the Lord’s providence,” he said simply. “It is part of our mission to have faith in such matters.”

Fr David Cilia, headmaster of the new college, is likewise optimistic. Explaining that the funds were loaned directly by APS bank – in which the Curia is majority shareholder – and that this loan was also guaranteed by the same Curia, he went on to add that he had “full faith” that the school would manage to raise the necessary funds to pay it back in full, and with interest, in 15 years instead of the stipulated 20.

Fr Cilia explained the choice of APS Ltd as a ‘declaration of confidence in the Church’s own bank’ – but the converse is equally valid. It remains, after all, debatable whether any other financial institution would have been as keen as APS to fork out €8 million in the absence of any tangible collateral… apart from the guarantee of an institution that (besides being the same bank’s owner) is also nearly €2 million in the red. 

But as Fr Cilia also pointed out, schools at least have the means to finance themselves – namely fund-raising activities, as well as the monthly ‘free donation’ by parents. The same cannot really be said for the Curia’s other expenses: namely its many charitable institutions – retirement homes, orphanages, drug rehabilitation centres, homes for persons with special needs, etc. – which account for a substantial portion of the island’s entire social welfare system. 

Mgr Charles Cordina acknowledges that the situation is far from rosy, but cautions against any overly simplistic conclusions. Some of the problems, he explains, are more complex than they at first appear.

Dwindling Sunday mass attendance has translated directly into a significant shortfall in one of the Church’s traditionally reliable revenue streams. But more worryingly still from the charity perspective, a drastic drop in population among priests, nuns and members of religious orders has deprived the Church of a previously dependable pool of ‘in-house’ social workers, with catastrophic effects on the Curia’s finances.

With not enough voluntary workers of its own to administer its several institutions across the country, the Church has had to hire professionals from the outside – social workers, professional psychologists and psychiatrists, facilitators, etc. Such services do not come cheap, and the Curia’s wage bill can be seen to have skyrocketed in recent years.

Mgr Cordina also explains that the Church has hired professional financial advisers to help make the most of its unused assets – mainly in the form of immovable property.

But many of these properties turn out to be unusable in practice. Having been bequeathed to the Church on specific conditions – for instance, to be used only and exclusively for charitable purposes (though many are plainly unsuited for that role) – the Church is forced to resist the temptation to use them for other, more commercial ends… even when the intention is to raise the finances necessary for charitable operations elsewhere. 

Mgr Cordina explained that in some cases, were the Church to even try and make use of some of these properties in that way, the descendants of the original benefactor would object on the grounds that the original conditions of inheritance had been breached… possibly reclaiming the property in the process.

But while the long-term implications appear dire, both Mgr Cordina and Fr Cilia echoed each other’s conviction that “the Maltese still have faith in the Church”, despite a recent increase in criticism directed at this institution.

Fr Cilia in particular points to the school itself as an embodiment of this confidence. “I must stress the faith that parents have shown in us, registering their children with this school even when it was just a hole in the ground,” he said with visible pride.

But now that the hole is not in the ground, but in the Curia’s finances, it remains to be seen if this confidence is built on solid foundations.