With the US running multi trillion dollar deficits this almost seems quaint:
VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Catholic Church leaders say the financial toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on Vatican coffers amounts to more than $60 million, according to a statement released Friday (Feb. 19).
The 2021 Budget of the Holy See was presented by the Secretariat for the Economy, a Vatican agency created by Pope Francis to oversee financial operations. Expenses for the tiny city-state this year are expected to reach almost $376 million, while revenues lag behind at just above $316 million.
The Vatican said that its finances were “heavily impacted by the economic crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” which shrank donations and closed the high-earning Vatican museums for months.
Go here to read the rest. That the Vatican ran a budget deficit for the year of punishment is not surprising. However, it does remind us of how little we know about Vatican finances. Thirty three years ago the dying Soviet Union revealed a budget deficit for the past ten years. Go here to read about it. When the Soviet Union fell we eventually learned that most of the budgetary data made public by the Soviet Union were exercises in make believe and bore little relationship to a massively dysfunctional command economy. Data from closed systems always has to be viewed with a boulder of salt and when it comes to budgetary matters the Vatican has been a closed system for many centuries.
I can only remind all that the Apostles trusted all their communal funds to the impeccable hands of one Judas Iscariot. It’s impossible to know for certain if much has changed since then?
It does look like the Church becomes corrupt when the Church becomes worldly. Many abusive clergy had their hands in the till. Church funds were/are treated like a clerical abuse slush fund to bailout the the Church hierarchy in abuse lawsuit payouts. All too often the Church hierarchy acts like the Church is their own personal private property to do with as they please. What we publicly know is not reassuring.