HYATTSVILLE, Md. (OSV News) -- Citing “crippling economic challenges” faced by the Archdiocese of Washington, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy announced June 5 “that the archdiocese will need to cut spending, reduce its workforce and restructure departments to accommodate a more streamlined Pastoral Center.”
About 30 pastoral center positions will be eliminated and some vacant positions “left unfilled,” the cardinal said, acknowledging that “a number of dedicated, hard-working employees will lose their jobs.”
He called the restructuring necessitated by the budget shortfalls “a matter of great sadness.”
In a letter to pastoral center staff, Cardinal McElroy noted that “the financial impacts of the pandemic and the fallout of the McCarrick scandal,” referring to disgraced former cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, Washington’s archbishop 2001-2006, who died April 3 at age 94. He was removed from the clerical state in 2019 after revelations of credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors and misconduct against adults
These financial impacts, “coupled with an extended period of inflation and volatile financial markets,” have “proven to be crippling economic challenges” to the archdiocesan pastoral center.
Washington’s archbishop said those factors have caused the pastoral center to have an annual operational deficit of approximately $10 million per year for each of the last five years, which has caused the archdiocese to draw on financial reserves to cover shortfalls.
“Our situation has only been exacerbated by the present economic uncertainty that is impacting so many, both locally and globally,” he said, adding that he had come to “the painful realization that the only way forward is to take drastic measures to achieve a balanced budget by July 1st of this year.”
Authorizing the layoffs of about 30 pastoral center staff members was “the most difficult decision that I have had to make in order to achieve a balanced budget,” he said.
Most of the job reductions affected the workforce at the pastoral center’s main office building in Hyattsville, a Washington suburb. Before the job reductions, that location included about 120 people, and the restructuring eliminated about one-fourth of those positions.
In his letter to staff, Cardinal McElroy said he is “sensitive to the reality that there are many people and families who will be impacted by this process -- whether it be a devoted employee who loses his or her job, a remaining co-worker who must take on additional responsibilities, or the ripple effect on the many who are served by an important ministry that can no longer be funded at past levels.”
The cardinal added, “I apologize profoundly to those who will be losing their jobs. This process is not a reflection on the quality or importance of your work. Each decision was a painful one that was made necessary only because of the financial reality that we now face.”
Cardinal McElroy said the archdiocese will assist the transition process for the impacted employees “by offering severance, extended benefits, and outplacement services to those whose positions are eliminated.”
Concluding his letter to the staff, the cardinal said, “I pray the Lord will accompany all of you in these days, understanding that it is God’s service that unites all of us who work for the Archdiocese, and your commitment to God’s service that makes our current situation all the more difficult.”
The Archdiocese of Washington includes 671,000 Catholics in 140 parishes and nine missions, with 90 Catholic schools in the District of Columbia and in the five surrounding Maryland counties of St. Mary's, Charles, Calvert, Prince George's and Montgomery.
