The Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese pays a...

The Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese pays a price for being the most populous diocese in the country--$532,514 a year, in fact.

Cardinal-elect Roger M. Mahony recently estimated that the archdiocese has grown to 4.5 million Catholics, based on recent census data. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that the archdiocese reports a lower figure--3.4 million Catholics--in the 1991 Official Catholic Directory.

“We pay our assessments on that basis,” Mahony said.

What Mahony referred to was a 15.7-cents-per-Catholic annual assessment from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to fund the bishops’ national-level committee work.

Jesuit journalist-priest Thomas Reese of Woodstock Theological Center says the U.S. bishops, meeting next week, Thursday through Saturday, in St. Paul, Minn., will debate whether the assessment rate should be raised or certain programs cut.

“Most bishops like what the conference is doing, but nobody wants to pay for it,” Reese writes in the forthcoming Jesuit magazine America. Reese said the assessments have steadily risen since they were initiated in 1967, but not as fast as the inflation rate.

The nation’s second largest archdiocese, Chicago, with 2.35 million Catholics, pays an assessment of $368,950. In California, the most populous dioceses after Los Angeles are San Diego (561,021 Catholics) and Orange (553,494) whose annual bills are about $87,000.

PEOPLE

Al M. Carnesciali, the public affairs spokesman for Christian Science in Southern California since 1983, has been named to the board of trustees of the Boston-based denomination’s publishing and broadcast arm. Carnesciali, who lives in Costa Mesa, thus joins Hal M. Friesen of Newport Beach and John Hoagland Jr. of Boston on the three-member board of the Christian Science Publishing Society, which oversees the Christian Science Monitor and the new Monitor Channel on cable TV. Carnesciali is a teacher and a licensed practitioner in the healing ministry of Christian Science, which has 167 branches in Southern California. His term as Southland spokesman--officially, director of the Garden Grove-based Committee on Publication--ends Sept. 30.

DATES

Applying personal faith to public policy issues will be discussed by the Rev. Robert Edgar, president of the School of Theology at Claremont, and Father John Pawlikowski, social ethics professor from the Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, at a three-hour forum at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at El Camino College’s Little Theater in Torrance. The event was organized by the South Bay Interreligious Council, which is charging $8.50 for tickets at the door.

As many as 3,000 volunteers plan to make thousands of telephone calls in a 12-hour period Sunday in Los Angeles County on behalf of Operation Exodus, the campaign to raise funds to resettle Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel. Calls will be made from five regional offices of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

More than 1,500 United Methodists from 400 churches in Southern California and Hawaii are expected to attend the five-day annual conference at the University of Redlands, starting Wednesday. Bishop Jack Tuell will preach at the public worship service set for 8 a.m. Thursday.

An eight-member North Korean delegation of government and church representatives will meet with non-Korean-speaking religious leaders at noon Friday at the start of the group’s 10-day visit to Los Angeles. Organized as part of Korean reunification efforts, the visit is the first official one to the large Korean-American community in Los Angeles. The Friday luncheon meeting is sponsored by the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Thousands of National Baptists will open their 85th Sunday school and training congress at the Los Angeles Convention Center, starting Tuesday. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Bishop Charles Blake of West Angeles Church of God in Christ are among the speakers, said convention host Melvin V. Wade Sr. of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church in Los Angeles.