Catholic diocese buys $2.3 million 5-bedroom home for retiring bishop

In 2016, [the bishop] co-authored an article backing a $950 million bond measure for affordable housing in which he wrote “too many children and families are living in cars or tripled up with other families in small homes because they can’t afford the rent on their own.”

“There is no moral or social justification, no justification whatsoever, for the lack of housing,” he wrote.

Many retired clergy choose to live in a retirement community in Mountain View sponsored by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Others live in church rectories, the homes of parish priests. Catholic orders like the Society of Jesus provide accommodations for fellow Jesuits.

“Those are all possibilities,” [the bishop] said. “But I’d like to live in a house so I would have the freedom to help the diocese but not disturb the priests in the rectories.”