Citing mounting financial difficulties, the Diocese of Camden announced this week that the St. Pius X Spiritual Life Center in Blackwood will close by June 30, 2010.
The Spiritual Life Center has operated with a deficit for several decades. In the last 10 years, the diocese has provided more than $4 million in subsidy to the Center.
The Center, which has offered days and evenings of recollection, weekend retreats, spiritual direction, meetings and workshops, was established in 1957 by the Salvatorian Fathers. The Diocese of Camden purchased the facility from the Salvatorian Fathers in 1969.
Situated on 20 acres on Peter Cheeseman Road, the Center includes large meeting rooms, cafeteria, kitchen and almost 50 guest rooms, a capacity that has greatly exceeded demand. With rising expenses and limited revenues, the facility has operated with continual deficits, including almost a half million dollars in the last fiscal year alone.
The Center also has been burdened with rising costs to maintain aging facilities, including almost $1.5 million in capital expenditures over the last 10 years.
The financial challenges facing the Blackwood center are not unique. From the 1930s to the 1960s, retreat centers flourished. In recent decades, however, retreat centers nationally have struggled due to declining attendance, parishioners’ busy schedules, the rising costs of maintaining staffs that were once predominantly clergy and religious but now are mostly laity, and competition from parishes that are now offering programs of their own. These trends have forced larger retreat centers to close across the country while smaller centers and parish-based programs are growing in popularity.
“While it will not be possible to continue to offer programs at this location, the diocese is committed to continuing a broad range of programs at other locations in the diocese that will address the spiritual formation needs of the people in South Jersey,” said Father Frank Danella, OSF, director of the St. Pius X Spiritual Life Center.
The spiritual formation programs of the Spiritual Life Center are funded in part through the House of Charity-Bishop’s Annual Appeal. The Appeal will continue to fund those programs at other locations throughout the diocese.
Four other Catholic retreat centers serve South Jersey Catholics: the Marianist Family Retreat Center in Cape May Point, St. Mary by the Sea, Cape May Point, sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Philadelphia, the Romero Center in Camden, and the John Paul II Retreat Center, sponsored by Divine Mercy parish in Vineland.
“I am grateful for the dedication of our outstanding staff who have done so much good work and who naturally are disappointed and saddened. I am also grateful for all the wonderful people who have supported the Center over the years and who have grown in their relationship to Jesus Christ through the programs and sharing that have gone on at the Spiritual Life Center,” said Father Danella.
“While this has been a difficult decision for all involved, we also know that we could not continue to operate this way indefinitely,” he acknowledged. “Yet, I know also that we will find new and vital ways of addressing the spiritual formation needs of the people of the diocese.”
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