Pope Francis had placed the Vatican’s finance ordering at the heart of his priorities. And for good reason: the annual deficit of the Holy See is estimated between 70 and 90 million. How to explain such a budgetary drift? © Pixabay – The Vatican annual deficit is estimated between 70 and 90 million euros. Save save Receive the Pope the Pope Francis alerts had the priority mission of cleaning up the Vatican finances. Elected in 2013 at the head of the Catholic Church, he went on a crusade to improve the Caisses of the Holy See with vast reforms and budget cuts. The accounts of the smallest country in the world are indeed in a catastrophic state. If the exact magnitude of the deficit remains unknown, the Vatican does not make public its accounts, estimates report 70 to 90 million euros in annual deficit, indicates TF1. This particularly worrying financial situation stems from several factors, explains the editorialist economics François Lenglet. This colossal deficit first results from the decrease in donations from the faithful, “which represents a substantial part of the revenues”, underlines the journalist. A decrease which is explained, by “the positions of the Pope, by the sex scandals which also shocked a certain number of Catholics, and then also by dechristianization, which strikes a certain number of Western countries”, he develops. Read also: What is the salary of a cardinal? Revenues from heritage in free fall recipes in decline: those taken from the Vatican heritage. The micro-state has many goods (churches, offices, residences, etc.). According to the budget published in 2021 by the administration of the Holy See heritage (APSA), it has more than 5,000 properties around the world. However, all of this heritage is not exploitable and the management of certain buildings is not optimal. The Vatican is also affected by “a crisis in the pension system”, analyzes François Lenglet, describing a pension fund, created by Jean-Paul II, which would today be “sub-capitalized up to several hundred million euros”. If Pope Francis could not carry out his mission of sanitation of finance until his end, he “still managed to purge the Vatican bank, the IOR, and to rid it anyway of 5,000 suspect accounts which were linked to scams, tax escapes, etc.”, notes the journalist. Receive our latest news every day, selecting the main news of the day. (tagstotranslate) Pope
Why is the Vatican budget in deficit?
