Archdiocese Buys Tucson Diocese Cemeteries

The Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese said it will buy two Catholic cemeteries in Tucson for $3.9 million as part of an effort to rescue the financially ailing diocese in southern Arizona.

The cemeteries will be operated by the Los Angeles archdiocese, but a spokesman for Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony said this week that the agreement calls for the Tucson diocese to repurchase the facilities for the same amount when financially feasible.

The Tucson diocese ran into financial trouble primarily because of its attempts to operate a commercial television station, KDTV-TV. The Tucson diocese’s deficit had recently reached $13.5 million.

Last week, however, the station was sold to Clear Channel Television Inc. for $2.25 million with the buyer to assume another $6.4 million in contract liabilities. The diocese also recently sold 10 acres of vacant land, eliminated 14 chancery jobs and asked the remaining 40 staff workers to take a 10% salary cut.

Bishop Manuel Moreno, who has headed the Tucson diocese since 1982 after five years as an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, appealed for help from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops last October. The Vatican and the U.S. bishops in turn asked Mahony and Bishop Norman McFarland of the Diocese of Orange to enlist financial experts from the Los Angeles and San Francisco archdioceses to put together a recovery plan for the Tucson diocese.

A national appeal by Mahony and McFarland has brought about $4 million in loans or pledges from other bishops.