Prague, March 9 (CTK) – The Czech Catholic Church is starting to invest the money granted to it by the restitution law in a variety of businesses, including unexpected ones such as fashion and sport fishing, daily Pravo wrote on Thursday.
Mainly some smaller dioceses, which have not seen large forests, fields or lucrative plots returned to them by the law, have a lot to do to become self-sufficient by the time the state definitively stops subsidising churches in accordance with the law, the daily writes.
It gives the South Bohemian diocese as an example.
“We are forced to launch businesses and seek opportunities, to which we were not accustomed before,” the diocesan economist, Rene Bouzek, is quoted as saying.
He said the diocese is negotiating about its capital investment in BeWooden, a north Moravian producer of wooden fashion accessories.
The diocese has gained land and ponds near Cesky Krumlov, a UNESCO-listed popular destination, which is why it mainly wants to invest in tourism, in cooperation with Jakub Vagner, an internationally popular promoter of sport fishing, the daily writes.
Furthermore, the diocese plans to build a brewery near the south Bohemian capital Ceske Budejovice.
A few church-run breweries already operate in the Czech Republic, in Litomerice, north Bohemia, and in the Prague-Brevnov Benedictine monastery, for example, the paper writes.
Like the Catholics in South Moravia, the South Bohemian diocese has started changing unused rectories, now in its possession, into apartments for tourists to hire in attractive localities such as the Sumava mountains or the Lipno water reservoir.
Until now, the diocese has been financed by the state, receiving 80 million crowns a year.
Under the restitution law, in effect since 2013, the subsidy will gradually decrease by 5 percent a year before being definitively stopped in 15 years, Pravo writes.
Simultaneously, the diocese will continue to receive an annual 108 million crowns in the next 25 years within the compensation churches are receiving for the property that could not be returned to them, the daily says.
Until now, the diocese has mainly invested the money in repairs and maintenance of buildings.
South Bohemian Bishop Vlastimil Krocil said churches are disadvantaged compared with business companies. If a church-run daughter firm makes profit and wants to transfer it to the diocese, it has to pay a 15-percent tax again, Krocil told Pravo.
“Business companies are exempted from this tax duty,” he added.
The paper also mentions business activities of some religious orders in South Bohemia, such as nuns from the Congregation Jesu in Steken, which has been repairing a convent returned to it and wants to transform it in a hotel.
The restitution money has also helped a community of nuns in Ceske Budejovice who use it to run a kindergarten and a workshop producing not only church gowns but also flags for firefighters and other associations from all over the world, as well as clothes for the Infant Jesus of Prague, a famous statuette, the daily writes.
“Our products are very labourious, which is why our business makes no high profit. We are doing it mainly to preserve the tradition of textile embroidery,” one of the nuns told Pravo.
