Vatican Announces Staggering 500% Increase in Deficit

Tall Timbers

Imperfect but forgiven
ROME — The Vatican announced Saturday a deficit of €66.3 million in its consolidated balance sheet for the year 2020, nearly sextupling its 2019 deficit of €11.3 million.

Last year’s deficit “was €11.1 million and this year’s is €66.3 million,” Jesuit Father Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, told Vatican Radio. “But I must recall that this represents solely the Holy See’s balance Sheet.”

While recognizing that 2020 was not “a good year,” Father Guerrero said that it was expected to be even worse.

“When Covid hit, the deficit we projected in the best-case scenario was around €68 million; in the worst-case scenario we projected €146 million. The middle-case scenario projected a €97 million deficit,” the priest said.

“The end result, instead, with a deficit of €66.3 million, was slightly better than the projected best-case scenario, and decisively better than what we had projected in the revised budget in March,” he stated.

While 2020’s ordinary deficit was €14.4 million less than the 2019 ordinary deficit, “the return on financial investments was down by €51.8 million and the extraordinary profit was down by €17.8 million.”

In recent years, the Vatican has suffered from a number of financial scandals, from asking American benefactors millions of dollars to bail out a corruption-laden Italian hospital to the investment of millions in dubious enterprises like the purchase of a luxury property in London’s Chelsea district or the financing of the steamy Elton John biopic Rocket Man, which purportedly contained “the most explicit gay love scene since Brokeback Mountain in 2005.”

https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2021/07/25/vatican-announces-staggering-500-increase-in-deficit/
 

Wings Like Eagles

Well-Known Member
ROME — The Vatican announced Saturday a deficit of €66.3 million in its consolidated balance sheet for the year 2020, nearly sextupling its 2019 deficit of €11.3 million.

Last year’s deficit “was €11.1 million and this year’s is €66.3 million,” Jesuit Father Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, told Vatican Radio. “But I must recall that this represents solely the Holy See’s balance Sheet.”

While recognizing that 2020 was not “a good year,” Father Guerrero said that it was expected to be even worse.

“When Covid hit, the deficit we projected in the best-case scenario was around €68 million; in the worst-case scenario we projected €146 million. The middle-case scenario projected a €97 million deficit,” the priest said.

“The end result, instead, with a deficit of €66.3 million, was slightly better than the projected best-case scenario, and decisively better than what we had projected in the revised budget in March,” he stated.

While 2020’s ordinary deficit was €14.4 million less than the 2019 ordinary deficit, “the return on financial investments was down by €51.8 million and the extraordinary profit was down by €17.8 million.”

In recent years, the Vatican has suffered from a number of financial scandals, from asking American benefactors millions of dollars to bail out a corruption-laden Italian hospital to the investment of millions in dubious enterprises like the purchase of a luxury property in London’s Chelsea district or the financing of the steamy Elton John biopic Rocket Man, which purportedly contained “the most explicit gay love scene since Brokeback Mountain in 2005.”

https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2021/07/25/vatican-announces-staggering-500-increase-in-deficit/
Before any collections are taken up to bail out the RCC, they should be told to sell some of their gold, precious jewels and priceless art works. They could easily wipe out their deficit if they even just sold a little of the real estate that they own all over the world.
 

Wings Like Eagles

Well-Known Member
Maybe facebook would pay a pretty penny for a Vatican chapel or two...
Some of those that are the remote areas of St. Peter's basilica are really macabre--there are pix online, if they haven't been scrubbed. There is a "chapel" made entirely out of human bones--with "statues" made of human skeletons wired together and the altar resting on a pile of human skulls. The relics of the saints are pretty awful too. The process of turning the corpses into the "holy" relics was entirely revolting--performed by monks and nuns. Pope Zuck might really like them.
 

Wings Like Eagles

Well-Known Member
I don't think I've seen that. The one time I made it to the vatican most of it was closed to tourists. I did manage to purchase a popener from a street vendor. It's one of my prized possessions.
A "popener"?

Anyway, couldn't find as many of the pictures of the macabre "relics" as a few years back but here is a Capuchin chapel in Rome to give you a sample of the filthy stain on the Roman clergy: http://www3.sympatico.ca/tapholov/pages/bones.html
 

Tall Timbers

Imperfect but forgiven
A "popener"?

It's a bottle opener with a mug shot of one of the popes. I no longer remember who the particular pope is... let me see if I can google pics of popes and figure it out... It might be pope john paul II. It's an image punched into brass and embedded in the metal opener. I gave it the name "popener" and brought a bunch home to give as gifts.
 

Wings Like Eagles

Well-Known Member
I'm curious about the backstory that led to such things, but not curious enough to spend any time on it.
Apparently, it came out of the paganism of the Middle East. Came from the practice of putting a dead body in a tomb and then going back a year later to collect the bones and either put them in an ossuary (an urn used for that purpose) or build a small shrine to house them on the property of the person collecting the bones. From there, it expanded and had a "Christian" stamp put on the practice.
 
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