Well, there are books written on “The Vatican Billions” by investigative journalists that will provide more detail. But this is just one “official” doc from 2001 that state Vatican income to be a staggering $466 Billion, with 17.720 Billion profit! Now that just the *income* - therefore it’s net worth is substantially more. (mind you, these are 2001 #’s) I would just love to see a list of “expenses” but we never will. Mind you, I believe the RCC does alot to help the poor, etc, however it she remains enormously weathly. It owns much of the world’s gold reserves, housed in England & elsewhere. Notice the reference to it’s market investments. Should Christ’s Church be gambling in stock & bond markets, or should it be totally dependant on tithes & offerings as taught in the New Testament Church?
http://www.zenit.org/article-1900?l=english
LOL, that is 17.720 Billion LIRE! If you had read the article that you linked you would have seen that in 2000 the Lira had an exchange rate of 2,080.89 Lire per dollar. As the article states, this was equal to only $8,516,000 US. This is hardly a large amount for an institution with the world wide responsibilities of the Vatican. BTW, most years the Vatican runs a deficit.
Petrosius already pointed out the article you supplied was denominated in Lire - not a huge amount.