$3.3 Billion in Buildings: Melbourne’s Catholic Church Asked What It Owes on Land Granted From Dispossession

• Melbourne’s Catholic archdiocese valued its buildings at $3.3 billion
• The figure covers 730 buildings on 350 church sites and excludes land
• 1850s registers show more than 70 land grants to Catholics
• The Yoorrook inquiry asked about sharing land-sale proceeds with Traditional Owners

The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne holds church buildings insured at $3.3 billion, Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission heard, ABC News reported on 8 April 2025. The figure covers 730 buildings on 350 church sites and does not include land value, schools, universities, hospitals or aged care.

Other churches gave figures too. The Anglican Church in Victoria reported $1.49 billion in land value, while the Uniting Church reported $214.3 million in land value for 39 per cent of its churches. Government registers from the 1850s record more than 70 land grants to Catholics, about 90 to Anglicans and dozens to Methodist and Presbyterian churches, now part of the Uniting Church.

Archbishop Peter Comensoli acknowledged that land had been “stolen” but said: “I can’t talk about that in terms of this parcel of land and that parcel.” Church executive Tim O’Leary said the Church “has been the beneficiary of land and other supports from governments in the context of dispossession.”

Yoorrook chair Aunty Eleanor Bourke said the commission wanted to understand the “churches’ current policies and practices in terms of land sales and sharing proceeds of sale with Traditional Owners.” The ABC noted that only the Uniting Church had historically run programmes returning land to Aboriginal groups, in the 1980s.

The hearing puts a figure on something often left vague: how much church wealth rests on land handed over by colonial governments. It also raises a live policy question about what should happen to the proceeds when such land is sold.

Jamaica’s churches also hold land acquired over centuries, some of it in the colonial era. As denominations sell, lease or develop that land, Melbourne offers a prompt for honest reckoning: knowing where church property came from, and considering how its use can serve the communities whose history is bound up in it, is part of good stewardship.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com