Catholic

Germany closed 611 Catholic churches and an estimated 300 to 350 Protestant churches between 2000 and 2024, and former sanctuaries now serve as a bike shop, a boxing arena, apartments and a hotel.

Religious institutions in Hawaii were part of nearly $200 million in real estate deals in 2025, including a $90 million land sale by the Catholic diocese and $80 million in purchases by the Latter-day Saints.

The Archdiocese of New York agreed to sell the ground lease beneath the Lotte New York Palace hotel at 455 Madison Avenue for $490 million, with the money going to clergy abuse compensation and repaying loans from earlier settlements.

A bankruptcy court approved the Catholic Diocese of Vermont’s $1 million sale of the former Loretto Home in Rutland to Cornerstone Housing Partners, a nonprofit planning affordable apartments.

At least 39 Catholic properties, including schools, universities, farms and pastoral centres, have been seized in Nicaragua since 2022, Confidencial reported, with the Jesuits alone losing nine, among them the Central American University.

Two excommunicated nuns still occupying a 15th-century convent in Belorado, Spain were detained and later provisionally released amid an investigation into whether sacred art belonging to the Catholic Church was sold irregularly.

Mumbai Catholics sent a legal notice to their archbishop over property at St Stephen’s Church valued at about US$11.2 million, arguing church leaders are only trustees, while the archdiocese said it was seeking bids to redevelop adjacent land.

Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese took in €31 million and spent €34.2 million in 2024, and its reserves could run out by 2041 as priest numbers and Mass attendance fall, according to its financial statements.

Growing evangelical congregations are buying closed Catholic parishes in the Midwest, including a $1.75 million deal for St Jude in Joliet, as a broker says most church buildings sell to other faith groups.

The Diocese of Hasselt will repurpose four churches in Maasmechelen, Belgium, starting with Meeswijk, citing falling attendance, fewer priests and rising maintenance costs, with new uses to be decided with residents over several years.

St Elizabeth Catholic Church in Richmond, Virginia, has broken ground on Greenway Village, 56 affordable rental homes in 14 buildings on land behind the church, with the diocese, Catholic Charities and the city.

A Somerset, Bermuda Catholic church has applied to expand its almost full cemetery onto a vacant parcel it obtained through a 2012 land exchange with a neighbouring owner.

Timber Equities secured a $37.5 million loan for 198 rental homes, 40 of them affordable, on the former St Columba Catholic campus in Chelsea, bought from the Archdiocese of New York for $48 million.

St Joseph’s parish in King’s Park, Belize City, founded in 1949 and home to the country’s first concrete Catholic church, launched a Walk, Run or Ride fundraiser towards BZ$160,000 of renovations to its two main buildings.

A Catholic church in Belles, Dominica, which doubles as the village hurricane shelter, has been renovated with help from UNDP, the government and overseas parishioners in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, though its priest says more work remains.