Politics & Government
Anglican Parish Appeals Fairfax Court Decision
The Falls Church Anglican doesn't believe ruling that forfeited approximately $2.8M was constitutional.
The Anglican parish that was forced out of The Falls Church filed a petition for appeal with the Virginia Supreme Court Friday.
The parish May 15 after Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows told and six other congregations in the Northern Virginia area in to give their church property to the diocese they divorced years ago. The 113-page ruling came after almost five years of litigation and hundreds of thousands of dollars in congregation-donated defense funds.
The petition requests the court review a number of legal and constitutional grounds, according to a statement released Friday.
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A senior member of the congregation could not be reached for comment.
The parish alleges Bellows ordered them to transfer the church’s real property, approximately $2.8 million in funds contributed by its members prior to 2007, and most of its personal property (bibles, hymnals, furniture, etc.), to the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, according to the statement. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, attorney general of Virginia, filed a brief in support of the church’s request for review of the trial court’s treatment of funds contributed by donors, according to the statement.
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With the vestry of the parish voting unanimously to move forward with the appeal, they believe the court’s ruling “failed to follow the Virginia Supreme Court’s 2010 directive to resolve this church property dispute by “application of neutral principles of law”— principles “developed for use in all property disputes” – and instead justified transferring the church’s property based primarily on the denomination’s internal canons,” according to the statement.
Efforts to negotiate a fair settlement were unsuccessful and according to the statement, the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia made it clear that they would agree to allow the congregation to retain only a few hundred thousand dollars and they would take more than $2.4 million of the funds in question.
No one at the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia could be reached by telephone.
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