Big Financial Shortfalls at the Vatican


 Once a year Catholic churches around to world take up a collection that is ear marked for the Vatican. The Vatican also owns real estate and a commercial bank. Vatican salaries and hiring have been frozen for several years. Bishops visiting the Vatican for meetings were told recently they will have to pay for Vatican lodging. With all of that, the Vatican is running unsustainable deficits.

The deficit runs about $50 million per year. If we assume salaries are not huge in the Vatican but many employees are provided housing and offices, I'm guessing the cost of each Vatican employee is something like $100,000 each. Check my math, it would take one million to fund ten employees. Fifty million would mean 500 employees would need to be cut. An insider said cutting employees to make up the shortfall would require closing 43 of 53 departments. 

Pope Francis and the bureaucracy has options to kick the can down the road. The Vatican gives money to various pro Catholic projects. It has some real estate to sell. Insider pundits say it can keep running these deficits for about five years before it would need to cut the 43 departments. In the meantime, there is much discussion of "finding other revenue sources." One "rule" I have about money is that three to five people have their eye on every dollar (or peso or euro) everywhere in the world. Finding more revenue means taking it from some use that will be defend against the Vatican. This loss is so large small cost cutting measures will not provide a solution. Something BIG needs to happen.

Sending more money from U.S. dioceses does not seem promising since many have declared bankruptcy from children molestation cases. If Catholic church bodies are like every other group, the response for more money will be, "We've got our own troubles. Find it somewhere else."

I am guessing early cuts will be in donations to various causes including those for the poor. Then, missionary projects in other countries will disappear. Untouched will be money to fight abortions. The most reliable and determined sources of revenue are not helping the poor nor spreading Catholicism. It is one singled minded cult within the denomination, Forced Birth.

A future Vatican will pump out only Forced Birth propaganda. The money for all the other high toned causes, the poor and forgotten, will not be there. Today's financial information makes this a sound prediction. 

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