ST. CLOUD (WJON News) — Retired and current employees in the St. Cloud Diocese are concerned about a significant reduction in their pension plans.
Jeffrey Kaster is a retired teacher and the co-organizer of a group of people looking for more answers. He says a letter was sent last fall to pension plan participants, followed by a webinar.
Kaster says almost 1,400 retirees and current employees will be impacted.
There are a lot of Catholic school teachers, youth ministers, and pastoral associates who worked for the diocese for years, who depend on, and currently depend on, this pension. It’s going to be cut on average by 42 percent. We don’t think that’s right. We think the diocese has the capacity to raise funds to cover this.
They were told the Christian Brothers pension plan was underwater by $35 million in the diocese.
The one thing about that decision is that because it’s a church organization, it is not covered by the insurance provided by the federal government for pensions. So, not only is there a deficit here, but it’s not covered by federal insurance. Christian Brothers just made poor decisions with its investing.
He says they were first told about the issue by letter back in November, but he suspects the diocese had to have known about the problem long before that.
The diocese has said repeatedly that we didn’t know about this. But, Christian Brothers who ran the program said for about 10 years that the pension program has been underwater, very significantly.
The group has made four requests of the diocese, including sending a letter or video to all parishes to be read at Masses, giving its group representation on the pension task force, offering listening sessions with pension plan participants, and starting a capital campaign to fully meet its pension promises.
Kaster says he’s personally had two conversations with Bishop Neary, but there’s been little progress since they were told of the issue back in November.
WJON news did reach out to the St. Cloud Diocese offices. They directed us to a webpage with the latest information on the pension issue. The most recent update says the pension plan has been frozen effective December 31st, 2025. This means that new employees will not enter the plan, and current employees have stopped accruing additional pension amounts.
Also, the funds will transfer from Christian Brothers to a new dedicated account at some point in the summer of 2026.
Minnesotans who played for the Vikings/in NFL
Native Minnesotans who played for their home state Vikings in the NFL, and Central Minnesotans who played in the NFL.
Gallery Credit: Paul Habstritt