So the "numerous reports" of the Vatican alone being worth $10 - $15B is untrue then?
So the "numerous reports" of the Vatican alone being worth $10 - $15B is untrue then?
Ignoring the more sensational charges,
Bankers' best guesses about the Vatican's wealth put it at $10 billion to $15 billion. Of this wealth, Italian stockholdings alone run to $1.6 billion, 15% of the value of listed shares on the Italian market. The Vatican has big investments in banking, insurance, chemicals, steel, construction, real estate. Dividends help pay for Vatican expenses and charities such as assisting 1,500,000 children and providing some measure of food and clothing to 7,000,000 needy Italians. Unlike ordinary stockholders, the Vatican pays no taxes on this income, which led the leftist Rome weekly L'Espresso last week to call it "the biggest... - http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,833509,00.html#ixzz2n6cnW5cA; http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3100280/replies?c=7
e. In 2004, the AP estimated that the Holy See's real estate, excluding St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, was worth nearly a billion dollars. Then there is the untold quantity of priceless artwork, including world-famous works by Michelangelo and Raphael. The Vatican doesn't even try to apply a fair-market value to its art collection — the price used to be listed on the church's books as 1 lira [0.48 USD]— but it's safe to say that if sold, even a fraction of the works could likely fetch billions more.
Catholic Charities—and the same could be said about the Association of Jewish Family and Children's Agencies or the Lutheran Services in America—has become over the last three decades an arm of the welfare state, with 65 percent of its $2.3 billion annual budget now flowing from government sources and little that is explicitly religious, or even values-laden, about most of the services its 1,400 member agencies and 46,000 paid employees provide. - How Catholic Charities Lost Its Soul ; https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7587
By Steve Fiffer Special to Tribune Newspapers What does a church do when faced with potentially having to pay billions of dollars in damages to victims of sexual abuse at the hands of its clergy? As Jason Berry documents so well in his compelling new book, "Render Unto Rome," the Catholic Church's initial response was to fight the charges...More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-books-0817-review-render,0,1427214.story