Cheltenham is locked in an 11-year legal battle with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over property taxes
Holy Sepulchre is run not by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, but by a for-profit corporation based in Florida. Montgomery County argues the cemetery should pay property taxes.
Cheltenham is in a battle with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over at least a decade’s worth of property taxes for one of the township’s largest properties.
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’s financial situation.
The archdiocese had also, the year before, signed a 60-year, $89 million lease with a for-profit death services corporation, now the Florida-based Everstory Partners, to run 13 Delaware Valley cemeteries, including Holy Sepulchre.
Church graveyards are typically exempt from property taxes, but after the cemetery was transferred to the LLC, Montgomery County revoked the exemption and notified Holy Sepulchre it would begin collecting for 2015, according to court filings. The county’s decision also affected Calvary Cemetery in Lower Merion, another of the 13 leased cemeteries.
Holy Sepulchre’s 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’s $9.1 million assessment, submitting an appraisal of $4.67 million.
Cheltenham Township and the Cheltenham and Lower Merion school districts are all parties in the case.
Whether the LLC should count as separate from the archdiocese is “a controversial question,” said Marie Reilly, an attorney with expertise in Catholic Church bankruptcy cases. “This is one of those arguments that lawyers love.”
It’s not clear how much money a decade of taxes from the 200-acre cemetery puts at stake for Cheltenham and Montgomery County.
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.
The county confirmed to The Inquirer that the cemetery began paying property taxes in 2025, but it’s unclear whether they’re paying for the whole cemetery plot, or only a smaller portion that had been involved in the parcel dispute.
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.
The communication dispute arose shortly before the judge ordered Cheltenham to pay more than $43,000 of the cemetery’s legal fees for making a claim about which parcels were included in the suit years after it began.
Another school district, Marple Newtown in Delaware County, settled with the leased cemetery in their district to receive $587,690 for five years’ worth of property taxes through 2021, and has paid property taxes in the years since, according to public records.
The Cheltenham school district and township, the archdiocese, and Everstory did not comment further for this story.
Inquirer Greater Abington
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