Most of the LDS Church's holdings in Arizona may be missions or meeting houses, but a newly filed disclosure statement shows the church owns or leases farms, cemeteries and historic markers as well.
The statement, filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission, offers a rare glimpse at the size of the church's holdings here but does not put a value on the 538 properties."Although a small part of the property might be capable of valuation, the specialized ecclesiastical function of the substantial majority of the property precludes any meaningful appraisal," Salt Lake attorney Oscar W. McConkie Jr. said in a letter accompanying the 72-page filing.
The church maintains that it is not required to file the annual report, but commission officials say state law requires it, and the church agreed to file papers in any case.
The statement covers holdings of the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but does not include the balance sheet that profit-making companies must file.
The corporation "has no Arizona bank accounts, and therefore no cash assets are shown," McConkie wrote.
The filing is acceptable to Arizona officials, said Joan Adams-Moore, director of the commission's corporations division.
"The non-profit code is very, very vague" in what it requires, and the filing satisfies the requirement, she said, adding that she couldn't explain much of the filing but didn't need to because her division is a repository and not a regulator.
Calls to McConkie and to church officials in Utah and Arizona went unreturned Tuesday, and the church's local attorney, Gerrit Steenblik, said he was unfamiliar with details of Friday's filing.
The holdings include such things as meeting houses, missions, welfare farms and scouting sites, Steenblik said.
The list also includes what appear to be cemeteries in the Tucson, Pmerene and Elfrida wards, a genealogical library in Snowflake and leased historic markers in Tuba City.
Then there are the Winslow Honey Project, the Snowflake Pork Project, the Yuma Grapefruit Orchard and the Taylor Cattle Ranch.
Other farms show up in Gilbert, Queen Creek, Duncan, Marana, St. Johns, Mesa and Phoenix, although it isn't clear from the list how many are used for church farm programs, and it appears there are other farms as well.
A number of stakes have what appears to be recreational property, either in their own town or in vacation spots.
The St. David and Sierra Vista stakes, for example, appear to own recreational property in Alpine, in the Apache National Forest more than 200 miles away.
The Gilbert and Stapely stakes, meanwhile, have a share in Prescott-area property, the list shows.