How much money does the Vatican have?

During the last 2000 years, the Catholic Church has accumulated an immense fortune. However, the secrecy and opacity surrounding the Holy See make it extremely difficult to quantify it. Today, the Catholic Church has a wealth of 2 billion euros in real estate alone. If we add the cash, gold reserves, stocks, jewelry, works of art, etc... the figure is sure to be stratospheric. This reality collides head-on with the continuous words of help to others, solidarity, humility or modesty coming from the golden dome of the Vatican.

The Holy See is one of the most opaque institutions in the world. Your secrets are kept under lock and key and protected at all costs. Let us remember that the Vatican has its own security and intelligence service, one of the best in the world according to some sources, to carry out this task.

Many journalists and researchers have tried to quantify the wealth that the Vatican possesses in monetary terms. However, because it is one of the most sensitive issues for the Holy See, most have failed.

According to the publication Nasdaq.com, it is very likely that no one knows the truth for sure outside the Vatican, since there are several reasons for the uncertainty. First, the Vatican Bank has been the center of embezzlement and fraud scandals for many years, making it difficult to get an accurate count of what the bank has available in terms of cash flow. Second, in some countries (the United States is among them), religious groups are not required to publish their financial data.

However, thanks to some leaks that have occurred in recent years and the estimates that have been made, some data can be known.

HAT IS KNOWN

To date, with the available data, the following can be stated:

In 2014 the Vatican Bank managed $64 billion in assets on behalf of its 17,400 clients.The bank has 764 million dollars in capitalThe bank maintains gold reserves worth more than 20 million dollars in the United States Federal Reserve.

As Nasdaq.com underlines, while these numbers may not sound like much in terms of the transparency of information from such a large and mysterious institution, until a few years ago not even this kind of information was available to the general public.

After Benedict XVI left the papacy, Pope Francis instituted a sweeping tax reform. In this regard, an article published on June 5, 2014 in The Boston Globe described the effort of the new pontiff to internationalize the financial management of the Vatican, entirely Italian. As reported, Francis replaced officials with representatives from Singapore, Switzerland, Italy and the United States.

This event marked a turning point in what was called Pope Francis's "honesty and transparency campaign," a campaign that was not taken seriously until then. The pontiff made public the bank's financial, transparency and operating statements. According to a Reuters article dated May 29, 2015, for the 2014 fiscal year, the Vatican Bank reported about $76 million in net profit, more than 20 times the $3.16 million reported the previous year.

According to some sources, in 2014 it was estimated that in the coffers of the small State there were around 10,000 million euros between gold, securities and currencies.

Referring to gold reserves, according to the newspaper Nuevodiario.es, the Roman Catholic Church controls approximately 60,350 tons, the equivalent of 30.2% of all the gold extracted. “At current prices, it is possible to estimate the value of the assets […] at more than 1.245 billion dollars,” the newspaper states.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH CONTROLS A FIFTH OF THE REAL ESTATE IN ITALY

The Catholic Church has built its treasure for centuries on a foundation that is very solid: brick. "From here comes an estimate of Vatican wealth of close to two billion euros," says researcher Giovanni Vegezzi.

This calculation, which has been published by the Italian press, has not been denied and is based on data from Gruppo Re, the Vatican's real estate advisor. According to Vegezzi, “the Church owns 20% of Italian real estate”, and it turns out that in Italy alone the ecclesiastical real estate assets are worth around one billion euros.

It is estimated that the Church owns some 300,000 buildings in Italy alone, of which 115,000 are in Rome. "Their number is growing since only in the Italian capital there are 10,000 wills in favor of the Church every year," emphasizes Vegezzi. “If the 700,000 buildings that the Church controls around the world are added to these, the value of the heritage could skyrocket to two billion euros,” says the same source.

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