Vatican “on the brink of Bankruptcy” due to dramatic decline in donations
The Vatican has found itself in the middle of a critical financial crisis, which threatens to jeopardize the livelihood of retired clergy and staff worldwide
Good for them, I guess?
"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
I was expecting this exact quote. Never fails to put a smile on my face.
But, but The eye of a needle was a market with a small gate and if you only had a reasonable load on your camels then they could pass through so it's actually ok for rich people to exist /s
"Another coin in the coffer rings, another soul into heaven springs."
Perhaps they should sell off some of the tons and tons of gold stuff they have.
There's a whole crypt of nicely dressed absolutely dead people who most certainly don't need to be wearing rubies and gold and diamonds all over their bones.
Or their huge amounts of foreign land
Like huge… tracts of land?
Paying out legal claims and bribes from all the sexual abuse scandals are not cheap.
Bullshit. They own more land than damn near any other entity on the planet. The whole celibacy thing was so the priest could not take the church owning and give them to non-church kids.
Hurting for money? Sell some land. Then pay for the abuse lawsuits some more.
Heaven Less Opulent Than Vatican, Reports Disappointed Pope
https://theonion.com/heaven-less-opulent-than-vatican-reports-disappointed-1819567798/
Exactly plus the millions in treasure they have under the Vatican.
How about all those hospitals? Sell them to local owners, force them to be non profit and pay off the resale victims the Vatican created.
Bankruptcy seems like a stretch, indeed. But those assets are largely not income generating, aside from donations and tourism. With those on the decline, their value situation is worsening.
Hopefully, they'll be forced to sell their "priceless" artifacts until there's nothing left.
Good
Except they have billions in stolen art and could liquidate it at any point. If not trillions, actually.
Nobody knows exactly what Vatican has but Porphyry Basin in the Vatican Museum is estimated to be worth 2$ billion alone (it was commissioned by Emperor Nero).
Vatican could literally end the world hunger with their treasure hoard.
Vatican could literally end the world hunger with their treasure hoard.
No they couldn’t. They’d end up making a bunch of warlords into billionaires while the regular people would go on starving. The only way to end world hunger is grassroots economic development and education (especially for women). You can’t do that by dumping billions of dollars into those countries. The problem is very tricky and the work is long and arduous.
Why would they want to end world hunger? What could motivate them to do so?
Hmm...
Their art collection is so massive, containing such crazy rare items, many cannot have a price tag as they are literally priceless. It's impossible to calculate its value due to the extreme rarity, or because anything like it to compare it's value to is also in the Vatican collection.
When they sell 1 priceless art item, they can sustain themselves for a year. They have hundreds of thousands of those items, if not millions.
Saying the Vatican goes bankrupt sounds like "Elon Musk struggles to pay for his groceries".
Sounds to me their massive stream of money is declining and they want to scare people into giving them more money.
Though if the idea that high value art is actually a money laundering/moving scheme is true, this might not be the case. The idea is that no one or few people actually want to spend millions on art but pretend they do as a front to spend millions on something else.
They could probably save some money by reducing the "cover up pedophile priests" item in their budget.
Just pray. If your God is the creator of the universe, it's pretty likely he can handle the situation once you let him know.
Dont forget the thoughts.
good, time to disband that pedo-clown organisation
Those grifters have had a good run for two millenia. As scams go, I'd say it was pretty successful - and still is, sadly.
I'm sure if they switched from molesting kids they could make some money jerking off grown men
And those soft ass priest hands must feel amazing. I’ll line up for one of the Father Jackoffski specials right away.
One gentleman’s latte, extra foam, please.
"Man who lives in a golden palace complains about money troubles. "
Sounds like any billionaire when tax collectors visit.
Good, because if they expect bills this means they are finally being held responsible for something
If only we could all live in our own personal "country".
Are these bastards really thinking we are going to believe their mafia like enterprise is supported by charitable donations?
Well it's a good thing they have all that priceless art they can sell...
They could always start selling indulgences again!
In fact, they could even expand beyond the traditional Catholic market. Even Muslims get into Catholic heaven if they're willing to cut a big enough check! Maybe you can get some atheist billionaire to buy a $1 billion "just in case" indulgence.
They don't need to sell anything. They're sitting on the horde of Rome's wealth along with all the nazi gold the church took in during WWII. They have the wealth to easily pay their debts but would rather enter into bankruptcy than actually pay them.
I see a business opportunity here, who knows how to code a website 🤑😋?
Do museums actually do that?
Probably the best news I've read so far today.
Sell your fucking chair, you clown.
Pope Francis got rid of that already, some 10 years ago.
I haven't seen him on that chair since, but I'm sure it's somewhere collecting dust.
Not sitting on it =/= getting rid of it
Sad. It would look so stylish in my living room
Thoughts and prayers!
Anyone think this is some independently verified fact?
THEY’RE CLAIMING THIS TO GET OUT OF PAYING ALL THE LAWSUITS they get because of all the r4pe & 4bus3 of little children
Have they tried NOT having Sex with Kids?
That part was fine. According to the article, what's causing the issue is that Pope Francis said they should help the poor and that climate change is real, and all their scattered asshole donation-makers in all corners of the world got butthurt and turned down the money faucet.
How dare the Catholic Church be a force for good!
You know that American Catholics are like a tiny portion of the worldwide church right?
Whoa whoa let's not get carried away. That's a load bearing pillar of the church pal
Just sell some real estate…. They’ll be fine.
In related news:
Aww geez, our 1500 year old grift isn’t working as well as it used to, sad!
Isn’t it more like around 2025 year old?
What little concessions they made to progressives was far too little too late while former popes sided with child abusers and rapists.
The joke is that Francis was still too far left for the big money Opus Dei Catholics in The United States and Europe.
They weren't friendly enough to the rapists. That's why the donations are drying up
Martin Luther has entered the chat
Of course people are blaming him being too accepting of trans people, his view of "let them survive but they're sinners unwelcome to the eucharist" is unfortunately far too progressive for some.
Fortunately the church of Jesus of Nazareth will prioritize profit over peace and love
The idea of the pope marginalizing a group because they’re sinners is pretty sad, given he has dedicated his life to teaching that literally every ordinary human is a sinner. Among other things.
Then that being too progressive for Joe Catholic is even more sad.
Unfortunately, what it is NOT is surprising. White Catholic family here. They dehumanize just as well as the rest of the conservatives.
Time to start selling Indulgences again.
Have they tried institutionally raping children and covering it up for decades if not centuries?
Oh, they have... Darn.
Please, that's just a side hustle
Gods plan
Oh, no. Guess they'll have to sell some of those golden trinkets they have
I wish.
Doubt they’ll even have to sell a diocese.
Good
Even if this is true, 2025 is a jubilee year. There will be so many pilgrims to the Vatican and donations would skyrocket
The Pope should just issue a Papal Bull that God has forgiven the Vatican's debts. And their creditors won't be able to argue, as he's literally infallible.
Maybe donating and praying to your favorite imaginary sky buddy doesn't actually solve anything.
I wonder how that can be. The Catholic Church owns real estate in almost every city in Europe, usually several buildings in larger cities, often in prime locations. Especially since these properties are only a fraction of the church's financial assets, the rental income alone should be enough to finance the church for all eternity.
Organizations that own that amount of stuff borrow against it to buy even more stuff and as it all goes up in value they borrow more and buy more stuff. In an endless loop. And people call crypto a scam 🤔
Owning that much in assets typically means you also have a lot of debt. Particularly with generational, wealthy, corrupt organizations.
Point being, they can be on the brink of bankruptcy even when owning half of Europe if they can’t service the debt they wound up.
Well, they can always get back to selling indulgences again or take out (another) mortgage on their state in the middle of Rome when the going gets tough.
If there are physical assets to back up the loans, doesn't that make it less of a scam than crypto.
Maybe not a good business strategy, and maybe the loans outweigh the "true" value of the assets, but there is something backing it.
They can be broke or rich depending on how they feel that day. They cook the books because they're their own country. They are truly a gang operation. My guess is they want you talking about them being broke as opposed to them being caught with more priests molesting children today.
AG report details abuse allegations against 52 priests, deacons in Diocese of Lansing
Yeah the church is rich af, just sell some of your gold you fucking parasites.
I'm going to need a really, /really/ small violin.
But God needs more money! C'mon everybody chip in, he needs his moneeeey!
Maybe they can save some money by protecting fewer pedos?
I'd suggest trying to have fewer pedos in the first place.
Sell some of that gold they've bought and or stolen in the last millenia or two.
Nice
I am an agnostic so my opinion might not be worth anything to Christians (or Catholics specifically), but I don't really see the point in organized church structures. If you believe in God, support his ideals, why do you need to go to church anyway, or at least why would you want your local church support some big hierarchy (often with controversial opinions or actions) for your money?
Same reason people go to comicons or music concerts or protests. People just want to be with others who believe in and like the same things as they do. It's a pretty simple and basic human behavior.
It's been a long while since I was involved in a church, but my recollection of the Bible isn't able to reference anything that implies there is a need for the hierarchy associated with the Catholic Church, or similar. It kind of says you can have a personal relationship with God, and I don't recall anything about Mary being special in any way aside from giving birth to the so called Messiah.
"Faith without works is dead."
Because part of the rules of any cult is to isolate yourself with other cult members. Christianity is no different.
Could this really be? After nearly two thousands years of Catholic Church they are finally brought to their knees.
Like so many altar boys.
Eh they're quite short so there's no need for them to kneel
What? BS.
Yeah wtf the Catholic Church in my country alone holds hundreds of billions in assets and investments.
Bullshit.
It could be. I haven't heard of the Irish Star. I couldn't decide whether it was bullshit propaganda designed to sound Pope Francis sound like a problem, bullshit propaganda designed to attract clicks and nothing else, truth presented with the goal of making Pope Francis sound like a problem, or what really happened. I decided to post it and stop worrying about it.
Being owned by Reach plc is definitely not a reassuring sign of credibility. Highlights of other news outlets they own include the Daily Star straight up inventing an interview with Dwayne Johnson in 2019, the Daily Express having such a bizarre obsession with Princess Diana that they still pt her name in the headlines about once a week to this day, and the Daily Mirror seemingly doing its "journalism" primarily by the method of hacking into celebrities' personal voicemails throughout most of the 00s
something about rich man in the kingdom of heaven right?
Are you sure it's not because you've had to pay billions of dollars in settlements for priests raping children?
Are you sure that's not why?
I don’t think the victims are getting paid that much. Our society has gone from “if someone powerful did something to you then you did something wrong” to “okay maybe they were wrong for that” but we’re still a ways away from “and they should pay a real price.”
That wasn't a comment on the politics of the situation, the church just had to pay $800 million in California in restitution for their crimes. The Catholic church has spent billions of dollars settling lawsuits and criminal cases.
Nawww poor little pedophiles.