Property investor Samuel Leeds offered £225,000, then £250,000, for a closed Methodist church in Darlaston, Walsall, promising to hand it rent-free to a congregation rather than see it converted by one of 16 interested developers.

California’s Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, in bankruptcy since 2023 and facing 260 abuse claims, listed five more properties including a 12.44-acre Napa Valley vineyard, after selling two unused churches in 2025.

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.

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.

The Church of Scotland has listed Reay Church, an A-listed building believed to date from 1739 on the North Coast 500 route, at offers over £55,000 after its congregation merged into a new united parish.

Members of a South Florida church say they learned from a listing that their building and four others in the region were for sale by their national denomination, with the West Park church priced at $799,000.

Dublin’s Christ Church Leeson Park, judged too large for its Church of Ireland parish, has been sold to the Romanian Orthodox Church, which raised the money with help from Romania’s Department for Romanians Abroad, donors and its community.

The town of Wilton, Connecticut, is suing the company that bought its former 1864 Baptist church for $500,000 for $142,708.89 in back property taxes, saying the church’s religious exemption should have ended at the sale.

The Church of Scotland has sold 31 buildings to local groups in three years, but communities say weeks-long deadlines leave volunteers unable to raise the money to buy churches and manses.

Developer Shimshon Grunstein bought East Harlem’s 124-year-old Church of St Paul and Holy Rosary for $5 million, planning 88 homes after earlier deals collapsed over repair costs, one estimated at $44 million.