Who Owns More Land: Bill Gates, McDonald's or The Catholic Church?

Dan Budzyn
Mon, August 29, 2022 at 8:21 AM·4 min read




Land is the investment of choice for moguls. Bill Gates has invested heavily in farmland. People have said for years that McDonald’s Corp is actually a real estate company that sells food. You might not have realized that the Catholic Church owns lots of real estate. Which of these billion-dollar entities owns more of what might be considered the most precious commodity on earth — land? Benzinga did the research, and the results might surprise you.

The Case for Bill Gates: Microsoft Corp co-founder is largely considered the biggest private owner of farmland in the U.S. with nearly 270,000 acres. This number stems from last year's edition of The Land Report. It’s reasonable to assume that the purchases haven’t slowed down.

While Gates has said that the purchases are a result of his investment groups, he also recognizes the potential and the importance of farmland. He said in an ask-me-anything (AMA) session on Reddit that the purchases were linked to seed and biofuel development.

The Land Report reference came out in winter 2021, after which controversies circulated about Gates’ accumulation of American farmland.
Total acreage for Bill Gates: Well over 270,000 acres

The Case For McDonald’s: The McDonald’s brand is massive and has been around since 1955. Over nearly 70 years, McDonald’s currently sits at just over 39,000 locations as of January 2022. Those locations each come with approximately 1.2 acres. The research suggests that McDonald's owns about 70% of the buildings and 45% of the land at its locations worldwide. Once all the math is done, calculations show that McDonald’s owns around 47,037 acres of land.

McDonald’s only owns and operates about 15% of locations directly. The remainder is run by franchisees.

McDonald’s real business is acting as the landlord of its franchisees. It sets the ground rules and provides the layout for success. It’s been said that burgers are only sold because it’s the easiest way for its tenants to profit and pay it back.

Its intent is to purchase land, and a new McDonald’s is opened every 15 hours. As a result, McDonald’s income and land ownership continue to grow.

Total acreage for McDonald’s: 50,000 acres and growing

The case for the Catholic Church: The Catholic Church owns 177 million acres of land across the globe for its churches and schools as well as owning farmland and forest land.

If this number sounds astonishing to you, you’re not alone. The report comes from Yale Climate Connections, and its story about land ownership by the Catholic Church explains the importance its decisions can have on the environment.

The report tells the story of Molly Burhans, executive director of Goodlands, who discovered that the Catholic Church lacked a comprehensive inventory of its land ownership. Molly claimed that the Church hadn’t had an update to its inventory since the Holy Roman Empire.

After gaining permission from the Vatican, Burhans underwent a comprehensive of bringing the Church into the 21st century. A live database provides a visual of all its land holdings.

Total for the Catholic Church: 177,000,000 acres

Conclusion: The Catholic Church owns the most land, far more than McDonald’s and billionaire Bill Gates. If you are concerned about environmental change, global warming and climate change, this massive player has been flying under the radar.

Regardless if you’re an individual operating a 501(c)(3) or a massive corporation, land ownership should remain a priority. If you’re unable to take the first steps in owning property of your own, consider the following two paths.

Real estate investment trust (REIT) ownership: Purchased like a stock, these industry-specific holdings allow you to purchase property in an industry you believe in.

Crowdfunding: Real estate crowdfunding platforms allow you the opportunity to invest in fractional ownership of specific properties and real estate developments. These long-hold investments can prove to be fruitful over time.


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New York churches face questions about afterlife

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, citing declining attendance, rising costs and a looming priest shortage, announced plans to merge scores of parishes and close dozens of churches this year. USA TODAY’s Rick Hampson reports on the reaction Robert Deutsch and Matthew Colby, USA TODAY

Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

6:15 p.m. EST February 27, 2015

(Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)





NEW YORK – Our Lady of Vilnius Church, built by families of immigrant Lithuanian longshoremen, started out a century ago as a beloved worship space. Now, it's a coveted real estate asset.

In 2013, six years after the church was closed, it was sold for $13 million to one of the city's biggest developers. The following year that company flipped it like a pancake to another developer for $18.4 million.

Now the yellow brick church near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel awaits demolition to make way for an 18-story luxury apartment house.

"It makes you cynical,'' says Christina Nakraseive, a former parishioner who supported the legal case against the church closing until it was rejected by the state's highest court. "It seems like it's all about real estate.''

The issue has taken on added significance since the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, citing declining attendance, rising costs and a looming priest shortage, announced plans to merge scores of parishes and close dozens of churches this year.


The move raises an issue that has been faced by thousands (no one seems to know exactly how many) of shuttered houses of worship across the Northeast and Midwest: What to do with buildings that are often architecturally important and always sentimentally important, especially since a church's shape, age and location makes the building hard to reuse?

The booming residential real estate market in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn offers a solution, albeit controversial: Demolish them for -- or even convert them to – housing.

Several closed churches have been torn down to make way for apartment houses, including Mary Help of Christians in the East Village, which preservationists failed to save.

A few have been converted to apartments. A developer who paid $13.8 million in 2011 for St. Vincent de Paul Church in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn turned it into The Spire Lofts, a 40-unit apartment house. A former Pentecostal church in the Greenpoint section was converted into three apartments, each renting for about $100,000 a year. Wood-beamed ceilings and peaked windows remind residents of the building's ecclesiastical roots.

Several other such projects are in the works. The Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Brooklyn probably will be torn down, and St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the same borough will be converted into apartments, with a triplex in the steeple.

There are worries that real estate values might undercut Gospel ones.



The Our Lady of Peace Church on East 62nd Street in New York City was established by Italian immigrants who felt unwelcome in other parishes. (Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)


Robert Corti worships at Our Lady of Peace, whose red brick 1866 building will close when the parish merges with another on the East Side under the archdiocesan program called "Making All Things New" (which skeptics have dubbed "Making All Things Condo'' or "Making All Things Revenue").

Our Lady of Peace was established by Italian immigrants who felt unwelcome in other parishes. Corti's grandparents were married there; he, his mother, his aunt, his sister and his grandchildren were all baptized there. He walks eight blocks to go there, even though another church is closer.

Corti, a former CFO of Avon Products, understands cost cutting and downsizing. But he says closing a church in good physical and fiscal condition will alienate its loyal and generous parishioners.

The church sits in an official city historic district. Its façade is protected, but the building could be sold and its interior changed or demolished. Corti notes that the ongoing, five-year renovation of the 137-year-old St. Patrick's Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan will cost $180 million, of which about $70 million has yet to be raised. That's a big gap,'' he says. As for a possible connection between his church's real estate value and the decision to close it, he wonders, "Could it be a factor? They say not.''

Robert J. Corti, a former CFO of Avon Products, worships at Our Lady of Peace Church on East 62nd Street in New York City. (Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA Today)


The archdiocese says that some churches in merged parishes will not totally close (Our Lady of Peace may be used on unspecified "special occasions''); those that are closed will not be sold any time soon; and that any sale proceeds will be used to endow things like Catholic schools and religious education -- not for archdiocesan operating expenses or St. Patrick's.

A church closing is not a quick way to turn real estate into cash, if only because it takes time to deconsecrate a church when the process is contested. The 2007 closing of St. Vincent de Paul in Manhattan is still on appeal to the Vatican.

About a mile uptown from Our Lady of Peace, St. Thomas More parish also finds itself endangered (even though it's not yet clear the parish will be merged with another or what might happen to its buildings, which are not city landmarks).

St. Thomas More is a rich church in a rich neighborhood. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis worshiped there, and it was the site of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s memorial service. Its building, which has a 19th century pastoral elegance, is usually filled on Sunday.

It's also the parish of The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, who wrote a testy column in which she reported that parishioners wonder if "the archdiocese is driven by what drove Henry VIII, politics and real estate.''

She wrote that the church and its land "could bring in $50 million, maybe $100 million, adding: "Any developer would jump at the chance.'' Instead, she suggested that Cardinal Timothy Dolan sell his palatial residence on Madison Avenue.

In a testy rebuttal, Bishop John O'Hara, a Dolan aide who has supervised the consolidation, wrote that "the process has nothing to do with real estate.''

Dolan says his archdiocese can't keep spending $40 million a year to support "unneeded'' parishes. "We have too many parishes!'' he wrote in a pastoral letter. "We no longer need 368 parishes in their current locations! … There are 29 parishes in the South Manhattan Vicariate alone — all concentrated on 14th Street or below!''

It's not just money, Dolan says. The archdiocese will soon face a critical shortage of priests to administer its parishes.

They no longer include Our Lady of Vilnius, once a touchstone of Lithuanian Catholic identity and closed in 2007 because of what the archdiocese described as a dwindling congregation, a weak roof and a pastor who could not "understand, read or speak Lithuanian.''

Candles at Our Lady of Peace Church in New York City. (Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)


Former parishioners like Chris Nakraseive still gather occasionally on Sunday to pray outside their old church's locked front doors. They came Thursday, the eighth anniversary of its closing, to display icons, burn candles, sing hymns in Lithuanian and say the Hail Mary.

They're not the only ones who mourn the church. A neighborhood resident, Laura Barker, also stopped by. "I still miss the sound of the bells,'' she said.

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Mugabe: Whites Can’t Own Land in Zimbabwe

By Taylor Wofford
Filed: 7/7/14 at 3:47 PM

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe stands during celebrations to mark his country's 34th Independence Day in Harare April 18, 2014. Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters



Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe as a Marxist dictator since the country became independent from Britain in 1980, is telling his country’s few remaining white landowners: Your time is up.

“We say no to whites owning our land, and they should go,” Mugabe told supporters, according to The Christian Science Monitor. “They can own companies and apartments…but not the soil. It is ours and that message should ring loud and clear in Britain and the United States.”

Mugabe’s declaration is mostly symbolic. Few white farmers remain in the country after Mugabe’s first pogrom, which began in 2000. According toHuman Rights Watch, Mugabe sent “ruling party militias, often led by veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war,” to harass and expel the country’s then-5,000 white farmers. In 2012, The Guardian reported that no more than 500 remained. Mugabe and his allies now own about 40 percent of the land seized from white farmers, The Guardian said.

Many critics blame Mugabe’s aggressive land grab for Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown. In 2000, Zimbabwe was the world’s second largest exporter of tobacco; seven years later, it had slipped to sixth place, the economy had shrunk by 40 percent, and, in 2008, inflation hovered at 500 billion percent,Bloomberg reported.

Peter Godwin, whose memoir When A Crocodile Eats the Sun traces his white family’s loss of their land in Mugabe’s land reform, called Mugabe “a nonagenarian bellowing about antique struggles well past their fight-by date, while ignoring the juggernaut of economic collapse that bears down on him.”

However, Zimbabwe’s ravaged tobacco production finally appears to have recovered. According to the country’s Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, this year’s crop finally topped 2001 levels, Bloomberg reported. Agricultural Minister Joseph Made told Bloomberg Zimbabwe’s apparent agricultural recovery “vindicates the country and the policy,” though he did not speak to the decade of famine that followed the policy’s implementation.

Whether there exists strong support for Mugabe’s command among government officials and local leaders remains unclear. In the same speech in which he announced his plan to evict white farmers, Mugabe castigated cabinet members and politicians for protecting white farmers. Mugabe’s call to oust white farmers may be simply ignored. According to NewsDay Zimbabwe, one farmer present for Mugabe’s speech said provincial politicians “dine with whites by night and denounce them by day.”

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