The Vatican bank’s commitment to upholding Catholic ethics helped it achieve a profit of €29.6 million in 2022, according to its recently published budget. Officially known as the Institute for Religious Works or IOR, the bank, once a symbol of financial misconduct, has successfully rebranded itself as a pillar of transparency at the Vatican. Pope Read more
Pope Francis has tightened control and oversight over Vatican-based foundations and associations in his latest effort to impose international standards of accounting and governance on Vatican offices and affiliated entities. A new law aims to bring the Holy See into further compliance with recommendations from the Council of Europe’s Moneyval committee, which in April 2021 Read more
The Vatican has issued a new investments policy to ensure they are ethical, green, low-risk and avoid weapons industries and health sectors involved in abortion, contraception and embryonic stem cells. The policy requires Vatican departments to close investment accounts held in foreign banks and transfer them to the Vatican. The new policy was approved by Read more
A group of disgruntled Vatican employees has written a letter to Pope Francis, expressing their discontent over what they say are labour injustices at the Vatican. When Pope Francis decided to cut the pay of Vatican employees, lay and religious, in late March, it was mostly welcomed as a positive effort to rein in the Read more
Cardinal George Pell, who before his conviction of child sex abuse was the Vatican’s prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, strongly opposed a 50 million euro loan request to purchase a bankrupt hospital. His decision was endorsed by financial authorities at the Institute for Works of Religion, commonly called the Vatican Bank or IOR. Read more
The Vatican bank’s annual report shows a profit of €36 million (about NZ$55,630 million) for its last financial year. The profits, which are up €20 million from the €16.1 million in the 2015 year, are “being distributed in aid of the Holy See’s mission”. More properly called the Institute for the Works of Religion, the Read more
Francesca Chaouqui, a public relations expert and former consultant to the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See, strongly denied that he leaked confidential Vatican documents to journalists. “I can assure you that no reserved documents ever passed from my hands,” Chaouqui said. “Never, never,” she during her testimony at Read more
The wildly popular Pope Francis is more than a pontiff of the people. He’s an elite manager who’s reforming the Vatican’s troubled finances. The new pope wanted to talk about money. That was the message that went out to a group of seven prominent financiers—major Catholics all—from around the world in the summer of 2013. Read more