The dispute began in 2014, after the archdiocese transferred Holy Sepulchre Cemetery to a limited liability corporation the church controls called Philadelphia Catholic Cemeteries, as part of an effort to improve the church\u2019s financial situation.<\/p>\n
The archdiocese had also, the year before, signed<\/a> a 60-year, $89 million lease<\/a> with a for-profit death services corporation, now the<\/a> Florida-based Everstory Partners, to run 13 Delaware Valley cemeteries, including Holy Sepulchre.<\/p>\n Church graveyards are typically exempt from property taxes, but after the cemetery was transferred to the LLC, Montgomery County<\/a> revoked the exemption and notified Holy Sepulchre it would begin collecting for 2015, according to court filings. The county\u2019s decision also affected Calvary Cemetery in Lower Merion<\/a>, another of the 13 leased cemeteries.<\/p>\n Holy Sepulchre\u2019s owners appealed, arguing that the cemetery is still under the nonprofit Archdiocese of Philadelphia because the church controls the LLC, and should be religiously exempt. They also appealed the county\u2019s $9.1 million assessment, submitting an appraisal of $4.67 million.<\/p>\n Cheltenham Township and the Cheltenham and Lower Merion school districts are all parties in the case.<\/p>\n Whether the LLC should count as separate from the archdiocese is \u201ca controversial question,\u201d said Marie Reilly, an attorney with expertise in Catholic Church bankruptcy cases. \u201cThis is one of those arguments that lawyers love.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear how much money a decade of taxes from the 200-acre cemetery puts at stake for Cheltenham and Montgomery County.<\/p>\n In addition to the large gap between the assessment figures offered by the county and property owners for 2015, the parties at one point also disputed which parcels are included in the assessment appeal. The county in 2025 assessed the cemetery at $9.3 million, according to public records. This year, the cemetery would owe about $683,000 total based on the tax rate, including more than half a million for the schools.<\/p>\n The county confirmed to The Inquirer that the cemetery began paying property taxes in 2025, but it\u2019s unclear whether they\u2019re paying for the whole cemetery plot, or only a smaller portion that had been involved in the parcel dispute.<\/p>\n The case is still active, a Cheltenham School District spokesperson confirmed. But no filings have been added to the court docket since last year after Cheltenham filed a motion to remove the judge, accusing his office of communicating inappropriately with the cemetery side.<\/p>\n The communication dispute arose shortly before the judge ordered Cheltenham to pay more than $43,000 of the cemetery\u2019s legal fees for making a claim about which parcels were included in the suit years after it began.<\/p>\n Another school district, Marple Newtown in Delaware County<\/a>, settled<\/a> with the leased cemetery in their district to receive $587,690 for five years\u2019 worth of property taxes through 2021, and has paid property taxes in the years since, according to public records.<\/p>\n The Cheltenham school district and township, the archdiocese, and Everstory did not comment further for this story.<\/p>\n Inquirer Greater Abington<\/p>\n A Weekly Newsletter<\/p>\n Want to get Inquirer Greater Abington straight to your inbox every week? Sign up here for our guide to the news, stories, and events shaping life in your community.<\/p>\n This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer\u2019s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com\/donate<\/a>. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org\/supporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Cheltenham is in a battle with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over at least…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[128138,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-313923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-cheltenham-catholic-cemetery-tax-lawsuit","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Inquirer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792927688_885_I_circle_black.png\")
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