• Australia’s Catholic Church and its Notre Dame universities own and buy land and buildings, sell tax free education, and pay no tax or council rates – and kill communities by replacing street and community life with disengaged students, teachers and bureaucrats. For decades the Church’s Australian leader was Cardinal Pell.
Rivers of gold, no tax = unfair property billion dollar business.
When ‘religion’ is about money and privilege.
Notre Dame universities buy land and buildings with tax-free and rates-free privileges. Notre Dame out-competes, out-bids private developers when buying properties to create rivers of tax free gold selling religious-based education.
Notre Dame is a French branded education business, not a church, but owned by the church.
“Notre Dame” means, Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris (the Virgin Mary)”.
Notre Dame out competes other property developers and owners because it enjoys an unfair business advantage. The Virgin Mary business and property owner pays no taxes, no land tax, no income tax, no sales tax and no council, water or sewage rates.
How is the Virgin Mary’s business killing communities?
In Fremantle, Western Australis, the once diverse, community rich, pedestrian-filled streets are now empty, unsafe, and dead to the eye and heart. Over decades the church has bought all the properties four blocks back from the beach and 10 blocks wide.
• ‘Coming soon. Expanded campus.” Photo taken February 2025. Killing a community, one property at a time. [Tax free property developer, Notre Dame, buying up building after building in Chippendale, NSW. In the name of the Virgin Mary.]
In Chippendale, NSW, starting some 15 years ago, the church is eating up the small suburb, emptying the streets of small businesses, turning once vital, lively spaces into forlorn, dead to the world wastelands on weekends. A five day a week thing, deserted for the two day weekends. Some students, teachers and property bureaucrats who don’t work from home are there during university terms.
With each new building purchase the life, diversity and differences found on the streets beside the buildings ends. Besuited second rate academics and church approved devotees have no interest in or respect for the community they know they are replacing. Their god, the god of money, and their bank account keeps them company.
The contents of religion-based education is sexist:
“In 2021, the Seventh-day Adventist church-owned Avondale University and theological school the University of Divinity were elevated to Australian university status, joining the Australian Catholic University, which faced backlash last year over a speech denouncing abortion and same-sex marriage made by a guest speaker at its graduation ceremony.”
The former head of the Australian Catholic Church, which runs the universities, Cardinal Pell, . . .
In the United States the Catholic church has spent $5 billion on 16,2767 clergy sex abuse allegations over the last 20 years, between 2004 and 2023.
Bishops there have had to sell churches to pay compensation as their insurance companies have met less than one-fifth of the abuse-related expenses.
A recent report noted that four in five victims were male and one-fifth female. It spoke of a ‘lavender mafia’ dominating the Latin-rite Roman Catholic priesthood. The report noted:
“More than half the victims were between ages 10 and 14 (56%) at the time the abuse occurred or began, with 24% ages 15 to 17 and 20% ages nine and younger.
The report estimated the number of perpetrators to be 4,490, with a combined 95% of all alleged perpetrators being priests, either diocesan (80%) or religious (15%). Four percent are religious brothers and 1% are deacons (diocesan or religious).
However, if religious brothers had been included on the survey prior to 2014, the number of them who were alleged perpetrators likely would have been larger, the report clarified.”
In Australia, the church takes its land investments seriously, buying up land for future universities. Its forward planning for expanding its business is revealed by a recent disappointment the church suffered when the Victorian government compulsorily resumed its land to build a new public hospital there.
“In 2021, the then-Andrews government acquired the site for the new hospital on Ferris Road at Cobblebank using compulsory acquisition powers, promising to build a $900 million health service with 274 beds, an intensive care unit and a 24-hour emergency department.
The 6.86 hectare site will also be Victoria’s first fully electric hospital.
In exchange, the Roman Catholic Trusts Corporation, which manages properties on behalf of the Diocese of Melbourne, was paid $8.99 million based on a valuation from Victoria’s Valuer-General.
That multi-million dollar figure includes $8.82 million for the land, $15,000 in compensation, $12,000 for valuation and planning costs and $150,000 in compensation.
The money was transferred into the church’s coffers in April 2022.
But in November 2022, the church rejected the offer and flagged it would be seeking compensation.
• The Victorian government acquired land owned by the Catholic Church for the new Melton Hospital. (Supplied: Victorian Health Building Authority)
The disputed amount includes just over $17 million for the land, about $158,000 for legal, professional and valuation fees, about $12,000 for economic development expenses, $150,000 in compensation.
The church also claimed an extra $86,584 because it said the health minister failed to make an offer for compensation within the legal time frame, and which the church says cost it in interest debt repayments.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne has declined to comment. “
Finally, below are some comments by others, some facts including campus maps.
Poor ole, Freo, poor ole Chippo.
But, we here in Chippo know how to fight. The game is afoot . . .
• Notre Dame universities feature male-centric education . . . some modern students don’t buy it
• Good question . . . when is a church acting like a church?
• Paying for earthly desires, funded by property sales
• Chippendale being eaten by Notre Dame – out of date campus map – more properties purchased since then
• Fremantle Notre Dame campus map; out of date – more properties purchased since then