Riches beyond belief, yet the Vatican pleads poverty – Ivo Vegter - Biznews
The Catholic Church, one of the wealthiest institutions in history, claims it’s “on the verge of bankruptcy” with an €83 million deficit in 2023. While its vast troves of art, property, and global assets remain untouched, the Holy See blames the faithful for giving less, even as scandals, corruption, and liberal positions alienate traditional supporters. Ivo Vegter delves into the irony of an institution dripping in wealth, yet begging for more from its 1.3 billion followers.
Ivo Vegter
Give more, begs the Catholic Church, as the Holy See pleads poverty, though its problems are entirely self-inflicted.
The Catholic Church claims to be “on the verge of bankruptcy”, according to a newspaper article, with a budget deficit of €83 million (R1.58 billion) in 2023, €5 million higher than the deficit in 2022. It cites “the latest financial statements”.
At risk are the comfortable livelihoods of the Vatican’s retirees and its current phalanx of cardinals and staff.
The deficit number agrees with the estimate published in a report by the largest Italian daily, La Repubblica, in July.
Vague estimates
The Vatican’s finances are largely opaque, and are widely considered to be vague estimates despite the promises of Pope Francis, who ascended the papal throne in 2013 pledging modernisation, greater transparency, and economic reform.
It is therefore impossible to say with any certainty how wealthy the Catholic Church is exactly, but in technical economics terms, it is stonking rich. It owns bazillions worth of assets. It may well be the single richest institution on the planet.
The Catholic Church of Germany – where it is not only tax-exempt, but receives an 8% or 9% tax from every taxpayer – is second or equal in estimated wealth to the richest single religious institution, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which is worth $265 billion.
That’s billion, with a B. In only a single country. The Vatican deficit is in millions, with an M, four orders of magnitude smaller.
In most other countries, the asset value of the Catholic Church is shrouded in mystery, but it must add up to many trillions of dollars.
The Pope could likely sell a single painting, statue, golden crucifix or jewel-encrusted goblet from St. Peter’s Basilica – the largest and richest cathedral in the world – to make up the entire €83 million deficit. The Church could sell a single well-located property from the tens of thousands it owns around the world to cover its debts.
But that would not do. No, the Vatican prefers to blame the 1.3 billion Catholics around the world, who just don’t give enough. The Church amassed its staggering wealth by exploiting the despair and desperation of the world’s sick and poor, under laws that exempt it from tax.
It sucks money out of national economies through “Peter’s Pence” and other tithes and donations, and gives back in “charity” only what it chooses to return, with strings attached.
Contributions from Catholic parishioners and other donors have collapsed in recent years. In part, this is because of pandemic lockdowns, which kept the faithful away from churches and shattered many economies.
The Vatican hopes to correct the miserliness of the faithful by hosting a Great Jubilee in 2025, to commemorate the First Council of Nicaea, held in the year 325 under the auspices of Emperor Constantine I. Nicene Christianity, which eliminated schismatics who denied that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human, was made the Roman state religion 55 years later by Theodosius I.
The expectation is that some 35 million faithful will make a pilgrimage to the Vatican to attend this Jubilee, hoping to buy indulgence for their sins by giving until it hurts.
Traditionalists
The true reasons Pope Francis has failed to close the Vatican’s deficit are rather more prosaic.
It is true that revenue from giving is down, though besides the pandemic and economy that has a lot to do with liberalising and left-wing positions taken by the Pope.
Pope Francis’s most liberal positions are on the death penalty (he denounced it as intrinsically evil), and immigration (he has said developed countries ought to accept more refugees and economic migrants than they do). Both of these have merit.
Among his liberalising-but-still-ultra-conservative positions are preaching greater sympathy towards homosexuals (though the Church will not bless same-sex unions because you know what happened to the Sodomites who wanted to do male angels instead of ravishing Lot’s daughters like God intended), and allowing women to serve as administrators in the dicasteries of the Roman Curia (although excommunication awaits anyone who dares ordain them as priests, bishops or deacons, because they’re the cause of all the sin in the world, after all).
Contraception, in vitro fertilisation, and abortion remain strictly haram, to misappropriate the Islamic term.
The Pope is a lot more enthusiastic about his left-wing positions, which include unbridled anti-capitalism, apocalyptic views on climate change, and ranting against consumerism.
The Pope’s views are not popular with Catholic traditionalists, which may explain why they’re donating less to the Church.
Scandals
Compounding the financial hole in the Church’s income statement, however, is that it has been embroiled in endless scandals, of both the moral and financial kind.
The Vatican has lost tens of millions of euros in various financial scandals, some going back decades. The Pope can’t blame that on the Catholic faithful.
The Church has also paid vast settlements over clerical abuses. In the US alone, this amounts to an estimated $5 billion or more over 20 years. A single year’s settlements from the US could wipe out the Vatican’s alleged deficit several times over.
Meanwhile, inside the Church, staffers are complaining that Vos estis lux mundi, new rules promulgated in 2019 to combat sexual abuse and ensure that abusers are held accountable, are piling a dreadfully heavy workload on the Curia, which its officials find hard to bear given the salary freezes and hiring restrictions imposed by the Pope’s austerity measures.
Complaining about the burden on the Vatican of the Church’s history of sexually exploiting the children of the faithful is such a Catholic thing to do.
Self-inflicted
The Church’s financial problems aren’t caused by the faithful not giving enough. Its deficit is entirely caused by institutional corruption, sexual abuse settlements, and ham-fisted meddling in secular ideological disputes and culture wars.
The 88-year-old pontiff doesn’t have long to live, yet since ascending to papacy more than a decade ago, he appears to have achieved little by way of internal reforms, either on the moral or the financial front.
The blame for the Church’s persistent cash-flow problem can be found not among the 1.3 billion people it exploits for revenue, but among the seven deadly sins of its clergy and lay officials: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.
The Vatican is a law unto itself. The Catholic Church pays few, if any, taxes. It has extracted trillions from the people of the world and hoards vast troves of art and treasure. For this institution to whine about a mere €83 million deficit, and blaming it on the faithful, is disgraceful.
Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist, columnist and speaker
https://www.biznews.com/global-citizen/2024/12/20/vatican-pleads-poverty-ivo-vegter
This article was first published on the Daily Friend.