September 22, 2005
by Mary Frances Schjonberg

Hurricane Katrina created an unprecedented set of questions for parishes and diocese in her wake as well as for the national church.

The Church Pension Group (CPG) is allowing any parish or diocese affected by Kathrina to defer making its required payments to the Church Pension Fund and for health and life insurance policies. There is no deadline for resuming those payments at this point, according to Nancy Fisher, CPG's communications director.

The Rev. Pat Coller, CPG senior vice president for pastoral care and education, said "it's really new territory for us" to consider how to deal with so many parishes whose financial lives have been disrupted simultaneously. One question is whether those required payments might be waived entirely for a certain period of time but "at this moment they are simply deferred," said Fisher.

CPG trustees began discussing the issue at their September meeting and will continue when they meet again in November.

Fisher said 80 percent of the payments made to retirees and beneficiaries are directly deposited in the recipients' bank account. Some people may have had trouble accessing that money and others who receive paper checks may not have had a place to receive them, Coller said.

The CPG office has been available to help those retirees and beneficiaries, Coller said. Diocesan staffs have been able to write checks to those retirees on behalf of the pension group, she said.

Ann Ball of the Diocese of Louisiana said Thursday that all clergy and staff in the diocese are being paid. Some parishes have emergency funds for such times, she said. For those who don't "the bishop is taking care of that" with assistance from CPG and Episcopal Relief and Development.

"We have made contributions to the relief efforts directly to the bishops of the dioceses of Louisiana, Mississippi and the Central Gulf Coast to use as the bishops need to during this emergency," CPG's Fisher said.

Episcopal News Service