Where does the Vatican get its money? Does each parish contribute in some small way to the Vatican? How much do they have in savings?
A friend suggested that with 1 billion Catholics, the Vatican should be making billions of dollars every week. I told him that I would do some research.
Depends on what you mean by “the Vatican”. There’s actually three separate organisations here:
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The Vatican City State: Does what you’d expect a city-state to do – cleans the streets, pipes the water, provides the Swiss Guard and the SCV Gendarmerie, runs the post office, runs the museums, etc.
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The Holy See: The central organisation of the Catholic church - all those bishops and cardinals working in Rome in the Congregation of This and the Office of That are working for (and paid by) the Holy See, not the Vatican City State. The Holy See also pays for the network of papal nuncios and papal nunciatures throughout the world (the “Vatican ambassador” is in fact representing the Holy See, not the Vatican City State). All the publishing and circulation of church documents is also done by the Holy See.
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The Pontifical Charities: What it sounds like. A bunch of agencies which support charitable work (material needs of poor dioceses and religious orders, needs of the poor, children, the elderly, those marginalized and the victims of war or natural disasters; concrete aid to Bishops or dioceses in need, Catholic education, assistance to refugees and immigrants, etc.).
And to support these, there’s a variety of revenue sources:
The Peter’s Pence collection taken up once a year in Catholic parishes throughout the world. It goes to the Pontifical Charities. In 2012 it yielded about $66 million.
Revenues from the post office, admission fees to museums, sale of coins and souvenirs, sale of Vatican publications: goes to the Vatican City State. I’ve found no figures for these revenues.
A controversial outfit called the IOR (Instituto per le Opere di Religione, Institute for the Works of Religion) which manages a large investment fund to generate revenues for papal purposes. In 2012 it paid a dividend of $50 million. And there are other endowments not managed by the IOR, particularly property portfolios. Some properties are used for churchy things; others are let commercially to generate income.
Further donations from dioceses and religious orders throughout the world. It’s customary when bishops and religious superiors visit Rome they bring a donation with them. And, if it’s wealthy enough, a diocese is expected to send regular donations to Rome even if the bishop isn’t visiting. The bulk of this money comes from the wealthier dioceses, which are in the US and Germany. I have seen a figure of $32 million for 2011. There would, I suspect, be some private donations on top of this.
According to the CIA World Factbook, total revenues for the Vatican City State in 2011 were $308 million. However google yields other sources which give $308 million as the revenue figure for the Holy See, and say that the revenues of the Vatican City State were $113 million.
But all these figures get tossed around in a way which makes a comprehensive overview difficult. I haven’t seen a balance sheet or an income and expenditure account anywhere.
Frankly, that does not sound like very much money for a globe-spanning organization. A single hospital in the U.S. can have a budget on the order of 1 billion.
The Vatican’s not a globe-spanning organisation; the Catholic Church is.
The major costs that the Holy See has are payroll costs; it has a payroll of about 2,800 persons.
The Vatican does publish annual accounts, although they’re not especially informative.
One crucial element is the windfall provided by the Lateran Treaty. The Italian government compensated the Pope for the loss of the Papal State with a lump sum of 750,000,000 lire and government bonds worth 1,000,000 lire. Some of that was used to upgrade the physical infrastructure of the Vatican, but most of it was invested. Earlier this year the Guardian suggested that the property portfolio built with that money is now worth £500 million.
Usually, when people think of the Vatican as wealthy, it’s because of the wealth it’s holding, not because of the income. But most of that “wealth” is in the form of priceless pieces of art. What’s the value of those? Well, priceless.
Yes. But while we may not know what they are worth, thank to the summary accounts to which APB has linked, we do have a handle on how much income they generate. It’s somewhere below 83.7% of €261.5 million.
(Note: That’s gross income, not profit.)
The Vatican had some issues with its ATMs as well earlier this year. This was apparently due to a lack of money laundering controls.
Lots of issues with the Vatican banking system that go back decades. What is really going on? No one knows.
Thanks UDS for your expansive answer.
My friend was specifically upset that Catholic schools in our area (Ontario) often cry poor when the Vatican is rich. Its difficult to get people to see that there is not financial connection between the two.
One of the good things Pope Francis is trying to do is clean up the Vatican bank. There’s plenty more to do, though: Finance watchdog approves Vatican reforms, urges bank oversight | Reuters