One of the largest private homes in Philadelphia, the stately, three-story dwelling of nearly 13,000 square feet sits on 8.7 landscaped acres that sweep 900 feet from City Avenue to Overbrook Avenue.
Diocesan spokeswoman Donna Farrell would not confirm the report.
Surrounded by a tall, iron fence, the dwelling once known as The Terraces, at 5700 City Ave., has been home to Philadelphia's archbishops since 1935. The property includes an indoor swimming pool, a gardener's cottage, and a six-car garage. During Cardinal John Krol's era in the 1970s and '80s, it also featured a par-3 golf hole and putting green.
Sources say Chaput has not indicated where he might relocate his residence, but they speculate that the cathedral rectory in Center City or St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood are likely.
Chaput, a friar of the Capuchin order who lives by a vow of poverty, has declined to say if he might sell the City Avenue mansion.
"It's been the residence of the bishop for a long time," he said in August. ". . . It belongs to the church - not me."
Among its distinguished visitors have been Pope John Paul II, in 1979, and Cardinal Eugene Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, in 1936.
It is entered through a gate on Cardinal Avenue - the former 57th Street - just south of St. Joseph's University. Its only contiguous neighbor is a convent of cloistered nuns.
Karl Volk, a member of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish in Media who was parking his car on Cardinal Avenue last week, said he was ambivalent about selling the estate.
"In some ways it's excessive," Volk, 40, said as he glanced through the iron fence to the mansion's grand carriage entrance. "But it's been here for years."
