20th Appeal benefits retired religious JACKSON – Catholic parishes in the Diocese of Jackson will conduct the 20th annual appeal for the Retirement Fund for Religious on December 8-9, 2007.
The Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Jackson are one of the communities that receives grants made possible by this appeal. Religious institutes that are well known and revered for their ministry in the diocese but are headquartered elsewhere benefit through grants that are directed to the institutes’ motherhouses.
The Diocese of Jackson contributed $64,389.54 in 2006, an almost 21 percent increase over 2005 donations of $53,308.98.
Ninety-four percent of donations to the National Religious Retirement Office are awarded to religious institutes through basic grants.
In 2006, this appeal, which is conducted by the National Religious Retirement Office (NRRO) of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, DC, distributed $23 million in basic grants that benefited 515 of the nation’s Catholic religious institutes of women and men.
“The unfunded retirement liability is difficult and painful to comprehend,” said Sister Janice Bader, a Sister of the Most Precious Blood of O’Fallon, Mo., and NRRO acting director. The appeal, she says, has helped ensure this liability can become a “manageable concern,” rather than the “crisis” that writer John Fialka described in his groundbreaking article in The Wall Street Journal in 1986.
Since the first national annual appeal took place in Catholic parishes in 1988, NRRO has raised more than $529 million. The Retirement Fund for Religious collection has been the most successful appeal in U.S. Catholic Church history. Donations have enabled NRRO to seed and stabilize retirement funds at religious institutes, leverage local fundraising, and assist capital campaigns.
Grant awards have assisted investment and supported collaboration among religious institutes and helped ensure quality of life and adequate health care for thousands of women and men religious formerly at risk.
During the past two decades, however, the gap between assets available for retirement and the cost of living/health care for elderly women and men religious has widened from $2 billion to $9 billion and is expected to grow. In 2023, the combined Social Security benefits of all retired religious is projected to be $184 million a year, but cost of care will total more than $1.6 billion annually
More than 37,000 Catholic religious are now past age 70. More than 5,000 women and men require skilled nursing care. While costs for care in a skilled nursing facility in the U.S. average more than $65,000 annually, religious institutes have kept their average cost of skilled nursing care to $49,850.
The average Social Security benefit for religious women and men is approximately one-third that paid to the average U.S. beneficiary.
View the annual report at www.retiredreligious.org .
