In the budgets of the Catholic Church, the largest expenses are, with 21%, those intended to help local Churches in difficulty.
Donations from the faithful to the Vatican, the main input of their budgets, continue to plummet and the drop has worsened in the last two years also due to the pandemic, and in 2021 it is expected that the drop will be “at least 15 %”, as explained today by the person in charge of the Economy of the Holy See, the Spaniard Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves when presenting the Budgets for 2022.
“We depend a lot on uncertain income that we see decrease every year in this time of pandemic. Most of the donations from the faithful are through the collection of the Pence of Saint Peter in the churches and assistance in times of COVID is has reduced. This should make us think of other methods of requesting the help of the faithful and receiving donations,” said the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in an interview with the Vatican media.
The Vatican “minister” of Economy highlighted that in 2021 there has been a decrease compared to the previous year and that “it will not be less than 15%”.
“If in 2020 the total collection of the Pion was 44 million, in 2021 I do not think it will exceed 37 million. The decrease in 2021 is added to that between 2015 and 2019, of 23%, and 18% in 2020, the first year of the pandemic,” he explained.
Regarding the 2021 accounts, which will be presented in the middle of the year, he confirmed that losses of 49.7 million euros are expected.
Guerrero hopes to address this lack of income by improving internal efficiency and optimizing the performance of the heritage, as he assured that “the great part of the real estate property (of the Vatican) does not have an economic benefit but only a social one and sometimes has economic costs.”
He also explained that it is necessary to “find ways to attract more donations” and that “the first requirement is transparency and giving an account cleanly, in which I think we have taken many steps. Apart from giving an account each year by this means of the budget and balance, this year we hope to account for the inflows and outflows of the Pence and send the accounts of the Holy See to the Episcopal Conferences for their information,” he explained.
In this regard, regarding the sale of the London building, whose irregularities and losses of more than 100 million for the coffers of the Holy See have ended up in court, Guerrero assured that “the sale contract has already been signed” and that “the building has been sold above the appraisal”, although he did not give figures.
Regarding the budget for this year, the Vatican reported a change in the methodology by including 90 Catholic institutions in the budgets of the Holy See, compared to the 60 that were considered until this year. In this way, the expected inflows for 2022 will be 769.6 million and outflows are expected for 803 million, which means that there will be a deficit of 33.4 million.
Guerrero assured that an even more restrictive budget has been prepared again with the expenses of the curia reaching a new historical minimum of 289 million, compared to 293 in 2021.
In the budgets of the Catholic Church, the largest expenses are, with 21%, those destined to help local Churches in difficulty, while the gigantic Dicastery of Communication occupies 16% of the expense, about 37 million euros. annual. (I)
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