Churches and Monuments

By Kim Went and Elke Groos

As you already may have read, the company Donatus u.a. insures churches and monuments.

Until the 19th century, churches were almost always completely destroyed if there was a fire and often there was no money to rebuild them. The result was that denominations entirely disappeared. To be able to pay for the damage and to preserve and protect the churches, people started to collaborate and in 1852 Donatus was founded.

In the beginning, the churches were only protected against fire, but after 1947 other insurances were offered by Donatus. Nowadays, most Dutch churches, both Catholic and non-Catholic, are insured by Donatus. An example of a church that is insured by Donatus, is the St John’s Cathedral in ‘s Hertogenbosch

Churches

Churches almost always consist of a tower and a building. The tower is not always owned by the religious community. This comes from the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. Church towers were then used by the army as a watchtower and were therefore owned by the municipality. Nowadays, the tower is often still insured by the municipality and the building itself by the religious community.

More and more churches and monasteries have a new use. Often they can still be insured by Donatus. Examples of new uses of churches are: a cultural centre, a conference centre, a museum, a health centre or a (private) house.

For the church councils, Donatus classified the risks into five categories and offers appropriate insurances:

1. Volunteers: damage caused by volunteers
2. Employees: damage caused by an employee or damage to an employee
3. Liability insurance
4. Properties insurance
5. Exhibitions/events insurance

Monuments

Although the number of churches insured by Donatus has grown in the last year, the amount of religious people and with it the number of churches still diminishes. Eventually, there will be no more churches left to insure and that is why Donatus also started to insure monuments.

Examples of monuments that are insured by Donatus are castles, monasteries and national monuments. One specific example is the Castle Warmelo in Diepenheim. A lot of these monuments nowadays have a new destination/use, like a museum or a house. Even then Donatus can insure them, unless the monument is used in a purely commercial way. For these monuments, three special insurances were developed by Donatus: the Comfort, the Royal, and the Sublime insurance.

We hope, by writing this blog, we have provided a clear overview of the activities of Donatus with regard to churches and monuments.