David Kimbell is the CFO for the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee. In this month's Think Piece, he reflects on lessons gleaned from a recent trip to Rome with the 2025-27 Eucharistic Culture Project cohort, a two-year formation program jointly sponsored by the McGrath Institute for Church Life's Center for Liturgy and the Church Properties Initiative.
Seven Notre Dame students minoring in real estate are interning for mission-driven real estate organizations around the country this summer, with placements including both Catholic dioceses and faith-based affordable housing developers in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Denver.
The next Church Properties Conference, to be held April 5-7, 2027, will examine the Church as an agent of renewal for communities and environments under the banner of words from Psalm 104: "You renew the face of the earth."
This month's Think PIece is written by Sarah David, ('26), who graduated this spring from the University of Notre Dame with a BBA in Finance, a BA in Political Science, and a minor in Real Estate. She is pursuing a career in National Security and Policy in Washington, D.C., following graduation.
Gilbert Velez (’26) joined the Church Properties Initiative research team in spring 2024, during his sophomore year as a double major in Finance and Spanish, having recently added a Real Estate minor. As he graduates from Notre Dame this spring, the CPI team wants to wish him the very best, and to thank him for his stellar service to CPI, FIRE, and the field of church properties.
The YIGBY moment affords the Church an unusually conspicuous opportunity to demonstrate what is possible when a society treats land and buildings primarily as a means to meet human need and as an arena for personal and communal development.
The Church Properties Initiative’s fourth annual conference in March 2026 brought together a record number of attendees for two days of conversations around the Church’s role in housing affordability.
Members of the Real Estate @ ND Club (REND) attended a panel of mission-driven real estate practitioners in conjunction with the 2026 Church Properties Initiative annual conference.
Nadia A. Mian and Helen Ketema recently contributed expertise to a panel at CPI’s 2026 conference. New publications from their respective research groups are making data and insights on faith-based affordable housing and land use reform more accessible than ever.
A group of scholars and practitioners, including researchers from Notre Dame, gathered this month in Los Angeles to discuss congregational closures and future uses of faith-stewarded land.
CPI Program Manager John O'Neill sat down with Sister Damien Marie Savino, F.S.E., to talk about integral ecology, its place in the church properties conversation, and her new book, Learning the Language of Creation: Catholic Social Teaching and Integral Ecology.
Church Properties Initiative Program Director Madeline Johnson appeared as a panelist at Enterprise Community Partners’ 2025 Faith-Based Development Initiative Summit on December 4, 2025.
In addition to keynote speaker Chuck Marohn, the 2026 Church Properties Conference will feature voices and expertise from all over the church properties space.
This month's Think Piece, by Thomas Viz '27, examines various policy proposals related to the "Yes In God's Backyard" movement to address the housing affordability crisis.
The "Lasting Value in Real Estate" panel expressed approaches to real estate investment, design, and development in relation to the precepts of the Church.
Rev. Patrick Reidy, C.S.C., recently returned to campus after clerking for Justice Brett Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court of the United States. Fr. Reidy sat down with John O'Neill, CPI Program Manager, to discuss his interests and scholarship at the intersection of church properties and the law.
The Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative (HCRI) at Notre Dame's School of Architecture highlighted the positive impact of Catholic cathedral campuses in urban redevelopment efforts.
This summer, four real estate students interned with diocesan real estate offices, experiencing the daily cadence of these powerful and important ministries.
Land use planner, civil engineer, and bestselling author Charles “Chuck” Marohn will deliver the keynote address at the 2026 Church Properties Conference, scheduled for March 17 - 18 on Notre Dame’s campus in South Bend, IN.
For this month's Think Piece, CPI Program Manager John O'Neill sat down with Notre Dame Associate Professor of Sociology Kraig Beyerlein. Prof. Beyerlein is the Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society and a faculty affiliate of the Church Properties Initiative.
Notre Dame Sociology Professor Kraig Beyerlein and Wendy Cadge, President and Professor at Bryn Mawr College, organized and led a social science conference last March
Helen Mahoney joined the team as one of CPI's first research assistants the fall of her sophomore year. Madeleine Viz and Monica Latek served the team beginning the following summer, with Brendan Fahey joining the spring of his junior year. All four contributed to shaping key initiatives like CPI's approach to analyzing diocesan and civic property data, the Redevelopment Tracker, and an ongoing collaboration with the Chicago Congregations Project.
This summer, two dozen church property professionals will begin a two-year program aimed at forming leaders and advancing innovative projects related to the pastoral questions arising from church-owned real estate. This leadership program, the 2025-2027 cohort of the Eucharistic Culture Project (ECP), is a collaboration between the Church Properties Initiative (CPI) and the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy at the McGrath Institute for Church Life.
This spring, Church Properties Initiative faculty and staff presented original research at two academic conferences, contributing new insights on church land and buildings to scholarly conversations about American Catholicism and urban affairs.
This month’s think piece features an interview conducted in April 2025 with Fr. Stephen Koeth, C.S.C., CPI Faculty Co-Director and Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, as he discusses his involvement in CPI and his forthcoming book on the Church's suburbanization.
The widespread closure of houses of worship in cities facing housing shortages highlights the potential that faith-based real estate holds to support housing affordability.
The Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (FIRE) and the Notre Dame Law School (NDLS) have launched a partnership to deepen the work of the Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate's Church Properties Initiative (CPI).
Over the last year, the Church Properties Initiative (CPI) piloted a new program to serve as a “community of practice” for diocesan real estate directors.
