Rome, May 10, 2025 -Along with the religious leadership of the country’s 1. 4 billion Catholics, Pope Leo XIV then inherits monitoring of the Vatican’s bad finances– and his counterpart’s work to clean them up. The severe condition of the Holy See addresses was among the subjects chiefs tasked with choosing a leader to Pope Francis discussed ahead of the conference, according to the Vatican. Their get, American Robert Francis Prevost– then Leo XIV– is likely to remain Francis’s push to provide some attempt, said the president of the Vatican’s banks, known as the Institute for Works of Religion ( IOR ). ” Francis has started the process, I’m certain Leo XIV will remain,” Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, a French entrepreneur who was appointed to the position by Francis in 2014 as part of a radical reform of the Holy See’s economic model, told AFP.
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The Vatican fills its treasury by running facilities, galleries, and owning a large real estate portfolio, along with funds from the honest. However, its finances often run in the red. In 2023, it reported a unified loss of about 70 million dollars ($ 79 million ) on earnings of 1. 2 billion dollars. The Catholic Church’s financial politics have long been dark and scandal-prone. In a revealing case, in 1982 the Banco Ambrosiano– a lender majority-owned by the IOR– collapsed amid charges of money-laundering gang income. Its producer, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging that same year from London’s Blackfriars Bridge. Resisting weight When Francis became pope in 2013, items were not much improved. Italy’s central banks had lately suspended all lender card payments in the Vatican over its failure to adopt anti-money fraud laws, and a season earlier the US had added the little city-state to its list of countries of concern for money-laundering. In 2014 Francis created a special secretariat for the economy, clamping down on corruption and stepping up scrutiny of investments. ” There was no strong governance, the rules were not respected, we did not have the right competence,” de Franssu recalled of his early days at IOR. Francis once likened the effort fix and bring transparency to the books to” cleaning the Sphinx of Egypt with a toothbrush”, but the efforts produced some results, including the closure of nearly 5,000 suspect bank accounts. The Vatican’s reputation improved: it joined the Single Euro Payments Area and was later commended by the Council of Europe for its fight against money laundering. ” We have been more resistant than those that wanted to resist,” said de Franssu. Yet problems persist. Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a former advisor to Francis who once one of the most powerful figures in the Vatican, was sentenced to five years and six months in jail for embezzlement in 2023. He was one of 10 defendants in a trial that began in 2021 focused on a disastrous investment by the Vatican in a luxury building in London. The accused included financiers, lawyers and ex-Vatican employees accused of a range of financial crimes in what prosecutors called a “rotten predatory and lucrative system”. The trial involved the risky purchase of a building in London’s upmarket Chelsea neighbourhood, that resulted in major losses for the Vatican. The scandal was particularly embarrassing because Church funds used for such ventures also came from the Peter’s Pence, money donated by the faithful for the pope’s charities. Becciu– who was earlier removed from office and stripped of his cardinal “rights and privileges” and thus did not take part in the conclave that elected Leo XIV– lodged an appeal. Among the ongoing financial challenges facing Leo are a decline in donations from the faithful, rising staff costs and a fragile retirement system. Francis said last year the latter currently” cannot guarantee in the medium term the fulfilment of the pension obligation for future generations”.
