Archbishop to sell Atlanta mansion

SMYRNA, Ga. (AP) — Trying to appease angry parishioners, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Atlanta said Saturday that he will sell a $2.2 million mansion just three months after he moved in.

Archbishop Wilton Gregory announced the decision following a closed-door meeting with members of several church councils at his headquarters north of Atlanta.

He publicly apologized Monday for building the Tudor-style residence and will move out in early May.

“I have decided to sell the Habersham property and invest the proceeds from that sale into the needs of the Catholic community,” Gregory told The Associated Press after the meeting. He declined to take questions.

Gregory sold his previous home to Christ The King Cathedral, which plans to expand it and house its priests there. The archbishop said this week that if the church sold the new mansion, he would seek to live in a setting more modest than his current or previous home.

A group of Catholics in Gregory’s archdiocese had asked since January that he sell the nearly 6,400-square-foot mansion in keeping with the tone of austerity set by Pope Francis.

Elected last year, Francis said he wants a church for the poor, drives in an economy car and lives in a guest house instead of a Vatican palace. He has denounced the “idolatry of money” and warned against “insidious worldliness” within the church.

The mansion has an upper-level safe room, an eight-burner kitchen stove, an elevator, public and private offices and two dining rooms. Architects initially planned space for a wine room and wanted an antique chandelier in the foyer, though those plans were later dropped.