COMMENTARY

Retired Religious appeal to be made Dec. 8 – 9

Catholic parishes in the Diocese of Richmond will conduct the 20th annual appeal for the Retirement Fund for Religious on December 8 – 9.

Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Crozet, the Monastery of Poor Clares in Barhamsville and the Comboni Missionary Sisters in Richmond are among the religious communities that benefit from grants made possible by this appeal. Religious institutes that are known and revered for their ministry in the diocese but are headquartered elsewhere benefit through grants that are directed to the institutes’ motherhouses.

The Diocese of Richmond contributed $196,961.85 in 2006, a 10 percent decrease from donations of $219,907.08 in 2005.

In 2006, this appeal, which is conducted by the National Religious Retirement Office (NRRO) of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, DC, distributed $23 million in basic grants that benefited 515 of the nation’s Catholic religious institutes of women and men.

“The unfunded retirement liability is difficult and painful to comprehend,” said Sister Janice Bader, a Sister of the Most Precious Blood of O’Fallon, Missouri, and NRRO acting director.

The appeal, she says, has helped ensure that this liability can become a “manageable concern,” rather than the “crisis” that writer John Fialka described in his groundbreaking article in The Wall Street Journal in 1986.

Since the first national annual appeal took place in Catholic parishes in 1988, the National Religious Retirement Office has raised more than $529 million. The Retirement Fund for Religious collection has been the most successful appeal in U.S. Catholic Church history.

During the past two decades, however, the gap between assets available for retirement and the cost of living/health care for elderly women and men religious has widened from $2 billion to $9 billion and is expected to grow.

In 2023, the combined Social Security benefits of all retired religious is projected to be $184 million a year, but cost of care will total more than $1.6 billion annually.

More than 37,000 Catholic religious are now past age 70. More than 5,000 women and men require skilled nursing care.

While costs for care in a skilled nursing facility in the U.S. average more than $65,000 annually, religious institutes have kept their average cost of skilled nursing care to $49,850.

The average Social Security benefit for religious women and men is approximately one-third that paid to the average U.S. beneficiary.

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