Parish Finances Update

Last year, when we held parish assemblies in order to talk about our upcoming merger and to give you an opportunity to ask questions and offer suggestions, one of the issues we discussed was the financial situation of the five Catholic parishes in Penn Hills and Monroeville.  As you might recall, we talked about the fact that we expected our parishes to have spent $500,000 more in 2019 than was received in donations.  As we head into the second half of 2020, we wanted to provide an update on what our financial situation has been, this year.
Of course, the situation has been drastically affected by the pandemic. In some ways, this has worsened our financial position, but in other ways, has helped us “hold the line” on costs. Here are our results for January 2020 through May 2020:

 
In the first three months of the year, we saw that our spending deficit was even worse than in 2019: we were on pace to be $700-800K in the red for 2020. However, in April, expenses went down for two reasons: first, the effects of our first round of staff realignment were beginning to help us control our costs. Second, in mid-March, the pandemic forced us to close our buildings, and it seems that this reduction in expenses helped us keep expenses down somewhat.

Our donations, however, decreased by 25-30% once we stopped being able to celebrate publicly-attended Masses in our churches.  The parishioners of Christ the Divine Shepherd have responded generously to our pleas for help, and our donations are truly inspiring! Nevertheless, they’re still down (even considering the donations we received in April for Easter), and we’re hoping that they won’t decline further, as the year proceeds.
When we get the figures for June, we expect to see expenses rise somewhat (as we’ve begun using our church buildings for liturgy and prayer once again). 

The bottom line is this: we aren’t out of the woods yet – after all, we’re still spending more than we can afford – but the gap is closing! If we can continue to control our costs, and if we continue our financial support of our parish, we hope to have positive results this autumn and in the future!

As always, please keep the Christ the Divine Shepherd Parish community in your prayers!