The Czech Roman Catholic Church plans to deposit a part of the money
that it will get as financial compensation for its unreturned property
in an investment fund, Czech Bishops' Conference general secretary Tomas
Holub told yesterday's issue of daily Hospodarske noviny (HN).
Under the property settlement between the churches and the state that
took effect in January, nationalised property worth 75 billion crowns
will be returned to the churches along with financial compensation of 59
billion crowns plus inflation in the next 30 years.
The Catholic Church is to receive the biggest part of the money, 47.2 billion crowns.
Holub said the church is negotiating with three banks about the
creation of the investment fund that would probably be launched in
mid-2014.
There would be hundreds of millions of crowns in the fund and
individual dioceses would decide themselves how much they would deposit,
he said.
Holub told the paper that dioceses or religious orders would use the
profits from the fund for investments for schools, hospices, cultural
heritage reconstruction - or salaries, as the state contributions from
which priests are paid would gradually be decreasing.
In connection with the planned revenues in form of the compensation,
Czech bishops have approved stricter rules for dealing with property,
Holub said.
All transactions over 50,000 crowns now must be approved by the given
diocese and transactions over 40 million crowns must be approved by the
bishops.
Holub said dioceses would have to submit their business plans to make
it clear how they were going to administer their property. An
independent analytical group comprising external experts would assess
the business plans every year, he added.
Holub told HN the churches might receive a part of the financial
compensation in the form of state bonds. Negotiations with the Finance
Ministry are underway, he said.
The Social Democrats (CSSD) who won the recent general election would
like to reduce the compensation paid by the state to the churches and
to exempt Prague Castle from the restitution. Representatives of the
CSSD and the churches are to meet on Thursday.
However, church representatives indicated that they would not accept any reduction of the compensation.
"I don't expect the Catholic or any other church to accept the
lowering of the compensation. However, the use of these finances may be
agreed on," daily Pravo quotes Tomas Kraus, secretary to the Czech
Federation of Jewish Communities, as saying.
"The law has taken effect, the agreements, too, and so it would not
be good to revise them for various reasons," Kraus said, referring to
the agreement between the state and the churches and the church
restitution law.
Milan Badal, secretary to Prague Archbishop Dominik Duka, told Pravo
that the Catholic Church has offered several concessions, for example to
receive state bonds rather than cash.
Badal, too, said the purposes for which the financial compensation would be used may be clearly defined.
"We are willing to use nearly all the money for charity projects and
this should be the real subject of the discussion and of the
cooperation," Badal told Pravo.