Report: Philly archdiocese had $39M deficit in 2012

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Documents released today indicate the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia had a whopping $39 million deficit last year, but church officials say their financial situation has improved dramatically since then.

The current deficit now stands below $5 million, “and we will keep working to get it to zero,” archdiocese spokesman Kenneth Gavin said.

Archbishop Charles Chaput had warned of the bad news in his column last week, though he did not provide specifics. He wrote that the fiscal problems stem mostly from years of overspending, not fraud or the priest sex-abuse scandal — although the latter two certainly took a toll.

The public release of the full, audited financial reports was a first for the archdiocese, which previously had offered only informal statements. Chaput wrote that the church must be more transparent and “has a duty to make an accurate yearly accounting to her people ... whether the news is happy or not.”