Pittsburgh Diocese Creates New Legal Corporation

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2008/6/24/pittsburgh-diocese-creates-new-legal-corporation

[The Living Church] 26 Jun 2008--Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh has successfully filed for incorporation with the state of Pennsylvania to create a new corporation titled the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. A long-time critic of Bishop Robert Duncan claims the action is intended to make legal challenges to diocesan ownership of property more difficult in the event that delegates to the annual convention vote to disaffiliate from The Episcopal Church in October.

Writing in his parish newsletter, the Rev. Harold Lewis, rector of Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, said “we believe the action was taken because [Bishop Duncan] knows fully well that, as we have long contended, he is not entitled to take the assets belonging to the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh to the Province of the Southern Cone. For this reason it would appear that he has formed a corporation under the name of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, in the hope that that new entity can serve as the repository of diocesan assets.”

Fr. Lewis, Calvary’s senior warden, and the parish sued Bishop Duncan and the diocese in 2003 after a special convention adopted a resolution that declared in part that property in the name of individual parishes belonged to the local congregation. Calvary and the diocese settled without a trial. The parties agreed that the existing diocesan leadership was competent to administer the assets of the diocese and that they would continue to be administered in accord with past practice.