Judge Favors TEC Diocese in Pittsburgh Property Case

From The Living Church:

Posted on: October 7, 2009

A county judge has ordered the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) to surrender diocesan property and assets to the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, filed the lawsuit against the Rt. Rev. Robert W. Duncan, then the Episcopal Church’s Bishop of Pittsburgh, and the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh in October 2003.

Pittsburgh’s diocesan convention voted in 2008 to leave the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, based in Argentina. The Episcopal Church has reconstituted the diocese, which consists of approximately 40 percent of its previous membership.

Judge Joseph M. James of the Court of Common Pleas in Allegheny County ruled on Oct. 6 that a court-approved agreement from 2005 requires that property remain with a diocese of the Episcopal Church.

“Regardless of what name defendants now call themselves, they are not the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America,” the judge wrote.

“The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America did not cease to exist when the defendants chose to withdraw,” the judge added. “The defendants could not extinguish an entity that was created and recognized by the intervenors.”

The judge’s order does not include buildings among congregations that followed Bishop Duncan out of the Episcopal Church.