By Thea Jarvis

Archdiocesan Director of Finance Joseph Estafen was recently elected to the executive committee of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference at its 13th annual meeting held this month in Memphis, TN.

Estafen joins the 15-member board for a three-year term which involves him in selecting subjects appropriate for discussion at the conference's yearly gathering and gives him responsibility for helping to coordinate annual meetings. He and four others were elected this year by the general membership.

"The conference started out small but is now at the point where we had over 250 (at the October meeting," Mr. Estafen noted. "Interest in the conference is really growing. An increasing number of people see the need to come together on matters of mutual concern in areas of fiscal management and finance in general."

One hundred fifteen out of 170 dioceses around the country were represented at the conference; an excellent turnout, Estafen added.

He is personally gratified to have been chosen for the leadership position.

"I feel honored. The makeup of the conference is a real hybrid of individuals in age and position -- chancellors, vice-chancellors, fiscal managers, comptrollers," he explained. "I am honored that that cross-section of people would elect me."

Mr. Estafen has worked for six-and-a-half years in the area of archdiocesan finances, serving as Comptroller and Director of Finance.

His duties currently include supervision of the financial support and accounting of all Church administrative offices and agencies of the archdiocese as well as a broad fiscal overview of all diocesan parishes and missions.

He and his wife, Madeline, who is the financial administrator at St. Pius X High School, are members of St. John Neumann Church in Lilburn.

Mr. Estafen's personal philosophy on an orderly approach to the Church and money management is clear and practical.

"The Church has come to realize we are influenced by fiscal decisions just as any secular trade or business. We must make use of modern-day tools of business enterprise in order to survive in this climate," he feels.

"We as Church are coming to realize we have to move into fiscal management with its efficiencies and innovations in order to stay afloat and remain financially stable," he said.

For the future on the local front, Estafen is acutely aware of the tremendous growth of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and sees the response to that growth as a number one priority. Demographic movement into the Sun Belt has naturally meant more Catholics in North Georgia, and this will call for "increasing the financial base of the archdiocese to support its expanding needs," he observed.