Vatican Finances in Red Alert – Cardinals' Commission Rejected Proposed Budget
- The Vatican's 2025 budget, initially rejected in December by a commission headed by Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, was only approved in a downwardly revised version on 17 March.
- The deficits were €83.5 million in 2023, €78 million in 2022, and nearly €70 million in 2024.
- The Holy See runs a chronic annual deficit of €50–70 million, about 7% of its €1.2 billion budget.
- Personnel and operating costs each exceed €500 million.
- Income includes €240 million in declining donations, €185 million from real estate, and €140 million from other sources.
- St Peter's Pence, international donations from the faithful, has halved over the past decade, averaging €45 million annually from 2021 to 2023.
- A major concern is the underfunded Vatican pension fund for 5,000 people, with a deficit estimated between €350 million and €1 billion.
- On February 11, days before his hospitalization, Pope Francis created a "commission for donations," but many doubt it will solve the financial crisis.
- The equation is complex — entwining not just finances but internal power struggles.
- The late Cardinal George Pell had called these networks "the dark forces of the Vatican" and regretted that he had "underestimated" their capacity to harm.
- The Secretariat of State tried in vain to maintain financial control over the Curia.
- Its catastrophic loss of over €100 million on a London property exposed its limitations. Financial expertise can't be improvised.
- For years, financial control rested with APSA, which manages about €1 billion in real estate.
- The Vatican Bank (IOR) is an institution that has been cleaned up since its troubled state in 2013.
- In August 2022, Pope Francis issued a surprise decree that transferred the Holy See's fund management to the IOR - undermining APSA's role.
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