I know that priests have an income (well I don’t really know but I heard it somewhere) so I was wondering at what level of the Catholic Church does the salary part stop. Any ideas?
Nope, he doesn’t get paid. He isn’t necessarily bound by a Vow of Poverty, because not all Catholic religious orders take them. Then again, you don’t go into the Church to get rich.
Of course, being Pope is pretty nice, I’m sure, although in terms of responsibility it’s huge and apparently he’s constantly busy. But he gets pretty nice digs. Anything buys, however, is paid for by the church and remains its property after his death.
A bag of coins is buried with him.
Like the Bandit said. Someone asked this question to the (press secretary?) of JPII, who asked around. Nope, no salary.
No salary but the retirement benefits are out of this world.
The Pope doesn’t have a salary, but he doesn’t have to, since the papal household is cared for by his personal staff.
Priests with individual parishes get a regular salary; after all, it’s a full-time job, and they have to live somehow. In countries with a long history of being predominantly Catholic, it is customary for a parish priest to live in a vicarage building owned by the Church which has traditionally been used to house the priest; in addition to that, the Church will frequently arrange for a housekeeper doing his household, but as far as I know from what our local priest told me, these benefits are at least partially deducted from his salary.
Catholic bishops often live in rather luxurious which, again, have served as the bishop’s home for centuries; in the past, the Catholic Church was careful to attach some lustre or glamour to its high-ranking functionaries, and in most of Europe, bishops exerted considerable secular power over many centuries. They have some personal secretaries and assistants, but they don’t have a fully-equipped staff doing everything for them as the Pope has, so I think bishops do get a regular salary. The same is true, I think, for the really top-level officials in the Vatican who are usually titular bishops.
Pope John XXIII was once asked “How many people work at the Vatican?” He replied, “Oh, about half of them.”
Regards,
Shodan
At the point in his career when a pope or cardinal gravitates to non-salaried status, I’m curious to know what happens to his earthly possessions in the shape of cash, property, and investments. Does he retain ownership of these assets or does he donate them to the Church?
In terms of the salaries of other people at the Vatican (and I’m taking this information from John Allen’s “All the Pope’s Men”, which is a good book if you’re interested in how the Vatican/Curia actually fuctions.), there’s a pay scale with ten grades, from 1-10. He also gives information from one set of monthly pay stubs, of a priest who entered curial service as a level 6 in February, 2001:
Salary: 1,291.48
Special Addition : 68.13 (to offset cost of living increases)
Preliminary earnings: 1,359.61 (Annual Salary 16,315.22 euros)
(minus)
Health Insurance: 26.39
Severance: 19.79
Net Earnings: 1,313.43 (Annual Net 15,761.16 euros)
In April of 2002, he was promoted to level 7, and his salary went up to 18,239.88 euros (about $28,000), so Vatican employees don’t make much.
I’d like to add that many European nations have concluded treaties (“concordats”) with the Holy See, containing provisions on the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. In many cases, these concordats provide for bishops to receive a salary from the state; I believe that this is true for the State of Bavaria, where I live, but after some googling I couldn’t find the text of the concordat online, and I don’t have the collection of Bavarian statutes at hand which I used in law school, so I can’t look it up to see how much this is.
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Oh, you said the Pope. Nevermind.
So much for the joke that was going around* after the election of John Paul II in 1978:
Q: “Why are they building a bowling alley in the Vatican?”
A: “So the Pope can have some place to cash his paycheck.”
*In Chicago and Detroit, at least.
Well, Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict 16, is known to have been the titled owner of a 1999 VW Golf while already a Cardinal and working as Prefect of the CDF at the Vatican; he sold it as a regular used car, because he never drove it as his transportation was taken care of by the Church.
A bishop/cardinal/Pope’s personal, private property (not bought by the Church) is his personal, private property and he disposes of it as he wishes. He may donate to the Church; if it’s hereditary family property (say if it’s the family farm) he may transfer title to another relative; he may use his holdings to endow a foundation, or place them in blind trust, or even indeed retain controlling ownership (though that looks not so good, what with the whole “serve not both God and Mammon” thing 
) and put down in his Will what he wants done with them after he’s gone.
If the pope has no income, then how does he support his dependents? I realize that it’s rare for popes to have children these days, but what about aged relatives? Some popes, even recent ones, must accede to the throne young enough to have living parents. Who takes care of them if the pope has no (living) siblings?
Who would take care of them if they had no children at all? Most old people in Western Europe benefit from some kind of social security system, which will give them a pension to live one. They wouldn’t need to be supported by their son the bishop or priest.
Government social securitiy is a fairly recent invention. Popes’ parents couldn’t have been living off of it for more than the last hundred years or so.
Yep. Millions of Catholics giving The Church what they can…and in many cases what they can’t (afford to)
Just drawing attention to this, which is the correct answer from what I’ve heard. A bag of coins is buried with each Pope, as “the only pay they receive” for their service as Pope.