Catholic Church Buys $2.4M Seattle House as Finances Peak, Parishes Close

Parishes are closing, but at least His Grace has a nice place to live.

From The Seattle Times

By Rebecca Moss

The Archdiocese of Seattle in November quietly purchased this $2.4 million water-view residence in Mount Baker. (Daniel Kim / The Seattle Times)

Parishioners are no longer welcome for Mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, but it remains a kind of still-life. Only a single bulb glows over the heavy, unlocked doors. Inside, prayer votives are cold and burned low. Gray light casts rows of pews in eerie shadow.

St. Mary’s merged in July with St. Therese, 2 miles away, one of a dozen parishes the Archdiocese of Seattle closed or consolidated to save money and minimize costly repairs to outdated structures.

Yet the archdiocese emerged from the pandemic with its highest financial gains in the last five years, despite COVID-19, declining Mass attendance, a small dip in parishioner giving and the ongoing strain of clergy abuse payouts.

Now the archdiocese’s finances have come under renewed scrutiny with the purchase of a home for Seattle’s Catholic leadership, prompting fresh criticism of the church’s transparency and money management.

The archdiocese last month quietly acquired the $2.4 million property in the stately Mount Baker neighborhood. The five-bedroom, 3,460-square-foot gray-shingled home with a bright-blue door overlooks Lake Washington.

The neighborhood of a water-view residence purchased for the Archbishop of Seattle for $2.4 million in November in Mount Baker. (Daniel Kim / The Seattle Times)

The deed showed no explicit connection to the archdiocese. It was purchased by AB Seattle Property LLC, and the Mount Baker home is its only transaction.

The company is registered under the name of a Seattle lawyer, William Crowley, who is the attorney for the Archdiocese of Seattle.

But Crowley did not buy the property for himself. Instead, it became the new home for Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne, who moved in after Thanksgiving.

The purchase was first made public in November by Heal Our Church, a group of Washington Catholics advocating for church reform, particularly related to clergy sexual abuse and increased transparency from the archdiocese. Six days later, the archdiocese confirmed the purchase in Northwest Catholic magazine, christening the property Bethany House.

The home’s kitchen has state-of-the-art appliances and quartz countertops, and according to a listing on Redfin, the house has hardwood floors, stained glass and a claw-foot tub.

While Seattle is known for soaring home prices, as of October, the median price for a single-family home in Seattle was $903,000, and $1.3 million in the Mount Baker neighborhood.

The archdiocese told The Seattle Times the purchase was prudent and aligned with its long-term goals for the church to increase its financial stability. The neighborhood is a roughly 15-minute drive from St. James Cathedral and Etienne’s office. The archdiocese said using an LLC protected the archbishop’s privacy and is not an uncommon practice of the church.

“He is a person just like the rest of us who wants to have a place to go home and be peaceful,” said Helen McClenahan, a spokesperson for the archdiocese. Etienne declined an interview.

Members of Heal Our Church say the purchase appears callous when Catholics are still grappling with the loss of beloved communities like St. Mary’s and the now-shuttered Mount Baker church Our Lady of Mount Virgin — as well as when many Catholics in Washington struggle to afford housing in general.


The archbishop “holds the position of moral authority and there is a lot of status and power that goes with that position,” said Colleen Kinerk, a member of Heal Our Church. “If Jesus made the decision, they wouldn’t be acquiring a waterfront home.”

Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne at a prayer vigil for racial justice in July 2020. The archdiocese’s purchase of a home in Mount Baker for Etienne has raised... (Bettina Hansen / The Seattle Times)

“A pastor, not a prince”

When Etienne was appointed in September 2019, he sent an internal letter saying he would be the first archbishop in decades not to live in the historic Connolly House, where his predecessors lived since the early 1900s, and planned to sell it. The First Hill property has been assessed at $8.8 million.

“I prefer to live a more simplified life,” he said in the letter. “I think the days of bishops living in a manner that’s a lot nicer than the majority of their people live, those days are gone, and they should be,” he went on to say in an interview with Northwest Catholic magazine, which is the official publication for the Archdiocese of Seattle.

“I am a pastor, not a prince,” he said, “and I want to live in a manner that’s more reflective of how my people live.”

He moved to the rectory at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Beacon Hill, whose second-floor residence was remodeled in 2020 for $160,000, according to county permits.

In March 2022, the archdiocese announced it planned to sell Connolly House and several other properties to Westbank, a Vancouver, B.C.-based real estate developer. The archdiocese said Connolly House alone would be sold for $13.5 million, based on market value — $5 million above its appraised value — with an agreement to preserve the historical value of the home. The deal included three other First Hill properties, which collectively were appraised at over $25 million, according to King County property assessments. Nine months later, the sales are not yet final.