Catholic Church

I’ve blogged this before but in the context of George Pell’s anti-confession I thought I would summarize it again.

The Vatican pretty much only owns the land within its borders. It’s annual revenues are around just less than half a billion dollars, as are it’s costs.

One third is from profits from the Vatican Bank, a sort-of investment back.

Another third come from tourism.

And the final third from Peter’s Pence, a small fraction of all of the world’s Catholic collection plates.

The local dioceses around the world have their assets in local trusts and get their revenue from collection plates, schools, grants and endowments.

They run cash neutral as well, on average.

The relationship between the Vatican and the dioceses is essentially that of a franchise. A small payment to use the brand and the promise of promotion to the employees that are so inclined.

That relationship is sans contract.

In essence, the church is a very small legal target because of the lack of internal contracts defining these transactions and the complete lack of control or ownership by the Vatican of the distributed hard assets.

Indeed a diocese can leave the church tomorrow and be better off due to not having to pay the Vatican their franchise fee. The employees would get to keep use of their assets but lose their hopes of promotion to titles such as cardinal and beyond.

In fact this is what happened during the reformation.

If the “church” is forced to make financial reparations resulting from these child abuse claims my guess is the local diosceses will foot the bill, and will do so by selling assets.

It’s a bit of a cluster fuck to be honest and desperately in need of modern restructuring, which may just be forced on them, at least in Australia.