The construction bill for a new Catholic Church service
centre in Munich has reached €130 million, more than triple the original
estimate when work began in 2011.
The news comes after weeks of controversy over big-spending
building projects by the German Catholic Church sparked by the Bishop of
Limburg, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, €31 million bill for his new
headquarters.
The costs of the Munich project have crept up
from €39.88 million in 2011, to €42.15 million at the end of 2012,
before ballooning to the current figure, Munich newspaper the
Abendzeitung reported.
But church spokesman Bernhard Keller told the Abendzeitung: "It is a cost increase in line with market conditions."
Former archbishop Friedrich Wetter bought the property from the
Landesboden credit institution in 2006 for €86 million, using the
church's property investment fund.
The current archbishop of Munich and Friesing, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, is now responsible for the project.
But the growing bill for the building's conversion to offices for 400
employees will be paid with money from the church tax, the Abendzeitung
reported, referring to the German system whereby those who have not
opted out of any religious body pay their chosen church a part of their
taxes.
The centre, which is set to open in October 2014, will
incorporate a computer centre costing €1.5 million, part of the overhaul
of the building's technical facilities which church officials claim
makes up most of the costs, along with new energy saving measures.
Archaeologists found remains of 14th-16th century bathhouses and
warehouses on the site in summer 2012, but these will be bulldozed to
create the building's 55-space underground car park.
The church
in the Munich district is modernizing its accounting system, according
to Keller, so that in a few years there will be a "concrete, transparent
and correct" record of the church's finances.
But valuing the 7,000 properties the church owns in the region could make the stock-take challenging.