HOUSING

Keating-Falwell Link: For several years, rumors have persisted that Charles H. Keating Jr., a devout Catholic, had used his Irvine-based Lincoln Savings & Loan to make loans to televangelist Jerry Falwell.

Regulators say they don’t know of any such loans.

Now a lawsuit in Ft. Worth, Tex., and an investigation by the News & Advance newspaper in Lynchburg, Va., where Falwell’s church is based, assert that Lincoln was the biggest preferred shareholder in a mortgage company that made loans to Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour.

The lawsuit, made public last week, charges that the former president of a church bond company and 19 others sold three series of bonds issued by Falwell’s church and bonds issued by several other churches without disclosing the true risk of the bonds.

The suit, which seeks $20 million, was filed by the bankruptcy trustee for the estate of Church and Institutional Facilities Development Corp., which was a subsidiary of AMI Securities Corp. Neither Falwell nor his church are parties to the litigation.

The Lynchburg paper, meantime, found that Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour still owes about $20 million of $32 million it borrowed from AMI and its affiliates.

About $8.5 million of that debt was borrowed through AMI Mortgage, which was backed by Lincoln. Lincoln was the largest preferred shareholder in AMI Mortgage.