[fakedang]

I'm actually surprised it's not higher. The Vatican Church owns valuable land in a lot of countries around the world. I was expecting at least a few trillion.

Not to mention, the artwork, the banks they own as LPs, the schools and hospitals they manage as non profit entities...

[looping__lui]

I don’t think stuff abroad is owned by the Vatican unless it is a deliberate investment. I might be wrong, but my perception was rather that “the catholic church is operating like a franchise in which each country does as they please”. The Catholic Church in Germany is insanely rich for example. I doubt they share anything with anybody…

In Germany, they get paid for the schools and hospitals (95% or so of operating expenses are covered by the government/etc in return for zero say; e.g., for a 5% share in expenses for operating a school they get to make 100% of the rules). It’s even more crazy with hospitals where they can essentially deny to provide services they don’t want to offer for “ethical reasons” or not hire “non-Catholics”. Again: this is 95% paid by the public…

[fakedang]

Vatican Church uses the Archdioceses in a number of countries practically as subsidiaries to acquire land holdings. That land is used for Church activities, or actively managed by the Archdiocese, with the Vatican playing a passive investor. I was told this by a church Cardinal (incidentally a German one). And this practice has become especially common in the developing world.

[User23]

In Germany that is paid for with the Church tax, so it's paid by Catholics and not Germans in general.

[looping__lui]

I talked about hospitals, kindergardens or schools under church operation. The government / public pays for that for the biggest part. I as a German tax payer also pay for the salaries of bishops etc. Not to me to mention religious mass festivals like “Kirchentag”: 50+% paid for by German citizens. The German church is collecting it’s “church tax” through the German IRS. And here is some fun fact: the burden of proof that you have left the church (if they happen to find out your parents baptised you) is on the individual. So, assuming that your parents had you baptised you will be liable for church taxes for the rest of your life unless you go to city hall and have it documented. The Catholic tax authority by law only is responsible to keep record of the notice that you left church for 10 years and can then demand (until the rest of your life) that you show a legal proof of having left the church. Happened to me. As a baby - you get baptised without consent. The Catholic church in Germany surely enough hunts you down for taxes until you die. In Eastern Germany there are often no good records - hence the church often forces a negotiated “settlement”.

[Nitrolo]

I don't think that's correct. The church tax goes directly to the church, not into state coffers. The salaries of bishops and priests, however, are paid directly by the state.

In addition to that Germany is still paying reparations for land that was expropriated from the church in the early 19th century, at a tune of half a billion Euros per year, for eternity.

If you speak German, this is an informative read: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchenfinanzierung

[Someone]

FTA: “Francis previously stripped the Vatican’s secretariat of state of its 600 billion-euro ($635 billion) portfolio”

“Previously” implies that’s not what happened today. I read that as 600 billion-euro being part of “all assets and property owned by Vatican departments and affiliated institutions”, but not all of it.

If so, it is higher.

[gattilorenz]

No, “previously” refers to the secretariat of state, which is one institution (the most important one) inside the Vatican. Now it’s all institutions.

[leros]

It's also a really old organization that has had a lot of time to accumulate wealth.

[User23]

I'm not a canonist, but to a first approximation at least I believe the following to be accurate. I welcome any correction from anyone more knowledgable.

There's no such entity as "The Vatican Church." It's not like the Church of Scientology or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in that respect. This is largely because of its ancient origins and its outlasting quite a few secular legal systems. Instead there are a number of institutions that all play a role in the mission of the Church. The Vatican does not own valuable land in countries around the world and it doesn't own every Catholic School, University, or whatever else either.

The Vatican City is an internationally recognized sovereign city-state on the Italian peninsula. Legally it's much the same as any other state and the Pope serves as Head of State and Head of Government. However, there is one major exception involving diplomatic relations. It is where much of the governing apparatus of the universal Church is physically located. A Diocese is a kind of territorial division of the Church. The Diocese of Rome's territory includes Vatican City as well as Rome. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, so it's his diocese. The Holy See is the Church's international government and legal person and the Pope is its leader. So countries don't have diplomatic relations with Vatican City or the Diocese of Rome, but rather with the Holy See. In fact the Vatican City state was created in 1929 by treaty between the Holy See and Italy. I'm not entirely certain, but it sounds like this motu proprio deals specifically with the Vatican City's assets and not those of the Diocese of Rome or the Holy See. So assets of the Diocese of Rome outside of Vatican City like the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran and the various other churches and schools and hospitals and what have you in the larger Diocese of Rome wouldn't appear to be involved. If we're conflating the Holy See with the Vatican, which is often done, then the Vatican owns some prime real estate and its contents in central Italy plus some financial assets.

Furthermore, Bishops are not franchisees. While the Pope does exercise a kind of special authority over the Bishops, they are largely independent, especially so financially. So for example the Archdiocese of New York owns Saint Patrick's Cathedral. The Archdiocese is a distinct entity with its own assets and liabilities, as well as governance.

While I suppose theoretically the Pope could change Canon Law to give himself the some kind of eminent domain power to seize Saint Patrick's or any other diocesan property and then sell it, the very notion is preposterous. It's much like saying that the US Constitution could be amended to allow slavery again. Sure it's theoretically possible, but it won't ever happen.

tl;dr: The Church, the Holy See, the Diocese of Rome, and the Vatican City are all separate entities that all happen to be headed by the Pope. However "the Vatican" is also commonly used as a metonym for the Holy See. Usually this doesn't matter, but here it's confusing, to me at least.

[wahern]

> Furthermore, Bishops are not franchisees. While the Pope does exercise a kind of special authority over the Bishops, they are largely independent, especially so financially.

For all the pomp surrounding the pope, like most apostolic churches the bishops in their individual capacities hold most of the control and power. And while in theory the pope can depose bishops, in practice it can very difficult unless there's a consensus or at least acquiescence among other bishops. Upsetting too many bishops for too long is how you get schisms, and the whole point of the church as an institution is to avoid schisms. Outright deposing bishops is very rare (thus the molestation controversies); usually what happens is a bishop is enticed into taking a titular see, or strong-armed into retiring.

The Roman Church has seen a lot of political consolidation over the millennia, but you can't get too far away from traditional episcopal authority without contradicting scripture (or developing a radically different interpretive model, as some more modern churches have done). Most non-Catholics, and many Catholics, see the church as a monolith, but the pope has de facto and de jure limitations to his authority, and that's before you even get into the complexity of civil law in all the jurisdictions around the world. As you point out, most property and assets are generally held under local civil law by individual dioceses, parishes, monasteries, schools, etc, with the local bishop in turn having direct or indirect control of those organizations, ecclesiastically if not civilly. It follows that an archbishop doesn't control any of this, either, unless it's organized under his regular bishopric. I believe the same is true of the pope--anything he controls directly (like Pontifical Universities) is incorporated as part of his territorial jurisdiction as bishop of Rome--but I'm not a canon law scholar and at this point the general rule might succumb to nuance and exception. Monastic orders can also be exceptional--they developed in parallel to the regular church and I believe abbots and even abbesses often hold some powers independent of episcopal authority, presumably sometimes including control over property and other assets.

In apostolic Christianity there's a strong tradition of practicing obedience, however. Obedience to civil authority, ecclesiastical authority, etc; of individual parishioners to the clergy, of the clergy to the bishop, of the bishops to the patriarch, etc. It's couched in terms of practicing humility. All the politics and back-stabbing notwithstanding, that tradition does operate to grease the wheels in terms of compliance with papal commands, but the pope has to stay in his lane, so to speak.

From a game theoretic perspective it's all incredibly fascinating, whether you're religious or not ;)