The Archdiocese of Philadelphia hopes to help remedy its "difficult financial situation" by marketing for sale the six nursing homes and an assisted living facility that it owns under its Catholic Health Care Services organization, the archdiocese said in a statement.
According to the statement the archdiocese issued Aug. 20, the archdiocese released financial statements in June that reflected a $39.2 million operating deficit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, and that showed "very significant and ongoing balance sheet issues that measure in the hundreds of millions of dollars."
To repair its balance sheet, "The archdiocese decided to market (the facilities) because they have been well-managed and as an entity they are an asset with great potential value," said Kenneth Gavin, director of communications for the archdiocese. He said the hope is that the facilities — which combined have 1,400 beds — will be sold as a group and that a buyer would be Catholic.
The archdiocese plans to make it a condition of any sale that all current nursing home residents will be retained, irrespective of their ability to pay or whether they are insured by Medicaid. It will make "every effort" to help ensure continued employment for staff, it said in the statement.
The archdiocese also plans to outsource management and leasing of its 11 cemeteries as part of its fiscal recovery plan. While it's too early to speculate about the details, "if we did go through with out-sourcing, we envision a landscape where current employees of the cemeteries would be working for a different employer," said Gavin.
Archbishop Charles Chaput said in a statement released just prior to the posting of the archdiocese's financial information in June, that the "financial pain we now face as a local church is inherited and due to chronic patterns of behavior. It has nothing to do with fraud or the (sexual) abuse crisis. Instead it flows out of well-intentioned but poor management decisions made over a period of nearly two decades at every level of archdiocesan and parish leadership …" Since he joined the archdiocese two years ago, Archbishop Chaput has aimed to shore up the financial gap by selling property and reducing the workforce at the Archdiocese Pastoral Center.
The facilities the archdiocese is marketing for sale are:
- Immaculate Mary Home, Philadelphia
- Saint Francis Country House, Darby
- Saint John Neumann Nursing Home, Philadelphia
- Saint Martha Manor, Downingtown
- Saint Mary Manor, Lansdale
- Saint Monica Manor, Philadelphia
- Villa Saint Martha, Downingtown
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