All the Pope's Men (10 page)

Finally, the Vatican is becoming steadily less secretive under the impact of a generational transition. For Vatican officials today in their fifties and sixties, whose formative experiences of the Curia came in the 1960s and 1970s, their mentors were products of the Italian-dominated, pre–Vatican II Roman culture, which was considerably more insular, more suspicious of the outside world, more clannish in its approach to working relationships, more clericalist and elitist. Curial officials who started out in the 1990s have been shaped instead by men who came of age in the Curia after the reforms of Paul VI. The internal culture under these officials is more professional and modern, with greater tolerance for diversity and open conversation. This tolerance may still be less than in most white-collar workplaces in the Western world, but it’s a striking change. Curial officials in their thirties today are generally less threatened by the press and less intimidated by their superiors.

An official in a congregation told the following story: “When I first arrived, I was asked to prepare a response to a letter we had received asking the reasons for a particular decision. I worked hard on it, hitting the books to explain the mind of the congregation on this particular point. What I came up with was two pages long. When I finished, I submitted the draft to the secretary. He called me into his office to tell me I had to learn the style of the Roman Curia, which, he said, is
secco, formale, e non dice niente
. . . dry, formal, and doesn’t say anything. He handed back the draft with everything crossed out except one line where I acknowledged receipt of the person’s correspondence." The official says things are different today. “There’s been a definite change of style. We’re much more open, more forthcoming, even though I wouldn’t say we’re effusive."

Let’s be very clear: Would it be healthier for the Catholic Church if the Vatican were more transparent? Unquestionably. The heart of this book is the conviction that the Vatican’s unique psychology and culture are difficult for people, including most Catholics, to grasp, which generates miscommunication and animosity. Some of this could be avoided if the Holy See were to make a greater effort to bridge the cultural gap. The Vatican is still a long way from what John Paul said he wanted it to be in January 1984, speaking to one thousand journalists: “A ‘house of glass’ where all can see what is happening and how it carries out its mission in faithfulness to Christ and the evangelical message."

At the same time, it is a serious error—in fact, a myth—to believe that by virtue of its alleged secrecy the Vatican is impossible to penetrate or understand. For anyone willing to take the institution seriously on its own terms, and to spend the time to learn its rhythms, it is quite comprehensible.

MYTH FOUR: VATICAN WEALTH

One can’t always blame outside forces for certain myths. Sometimes the Vatican leads with its chin, as it often has on its alleged “fantastic wealth." Consider the Vatican Bank scandals of the 1970s and 1980s, which combined shady business tactics with spectacular ineptitude on the part of key Vatican officials and their banker friends. The affair fired the imaginations of journalists (in his book,
In God’s Name
, David Yallop speculated that Pope John Paul I was murdered because he was getting too close to the truth) and filmmakers (Francis Ford Coppola, Godfather III). The affair solidified popular suspicion that Vatican officials spend as much time with spreadsheets as with prayer books and that the Vatican must be swimming in untold billions.

Of course, you don’t need conspiracy theories to be dazzled by alleged Vatican wealth. The Vatican museums groan with some of the greatest artistic treasures known to humanity, and at least some Vatican officials live and work in exquisite Baroque structures whose cash value defies reckoning. I once took a tour of the Basilica of St. Peter offered by the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the Vatican agency that administers the facility. The layman who runs the office said they had recently asked a well-known Italian contractor to make an estimate as to what it would cost in today’s dollars to build the basilica, exactly as it is, from the ground up. He started to work it out, then called off the assignment. There’s no point, he reported back to the Fabbrica; the resources required would be so astronomical that no government or corporate entity would ever contemplate such a project today, and the costs are literally incalculable. For German-speakers the Basilica of St. Peter is an especially bittersweet sight, because it was the sale of indulgences to pay for its construction that helped trigger the Protestant Reformation.

Over the years these riches have scandalized and disillusioned many Christians who fail to see the connection between playing international currency markets and following Jesus of Nazareth. Here’s a rather typical sentiment, from a guest opinion piece written by Marguerite Lilly of Mesa, Arizona, and published in the
Scottsdale Tribune
of August 13, 2003: “Imagine Jesus walking into the Vatican today. What would he say to those exalted priests dressed in elaborate robes and surrounded by unbelievable wealth? Would he feel he was once again in the temple, face to face with the Pharisees and moneychangers? Sadly I believe so." Or, to take another instance, in August 2003 I published a column about the brutal summer heat in Europe. William McGrane of Easton, Massachusetts, wrote me to ask rhetorically, “How about selling off a few Vatican treasures, buying some air conditioners and opening up cooling centers, i.e., schools, auditoriums, concert halls, etc., and providing genuine relief? Surely Rome could afford it."

Reality is more prosaic. To put it bluntly, the Vatican is not rich. It has an annual operating budget of $260 million, which would not place it on any top 500 list of major social institutions. To draw a comparison in the nonprofit sector, Harvard University has an annual operating budget of a little over $1.3 billion, which means it could run the equivalent of five Vaticans every year. This is to say nothing of the corporate world. The Microsoft Corporation in 2002 spent $4.7 billion on research and development alone, meaning that its R&D budget could fund the Vatican eighteen times over and still take clients out to lunch. That number, by the way, represents a mere 16 percent of Microsoft’s annual sales of $293 billion. The point should be clear: on the scale of the world’s mammoth enterprises, the Vatican doesn’t rate. Its budget would qualify it as a mid-sized American Catholic college. It’s bigger than Loyola-Marymount in Los Angeles (annual budget of $150 million) or Saint Louis University ($174 million), but substantially less than the University of Notre Dame ($500 million).

Where does the money come from? Three principal sources: investments and financial activity; earnings from real estate holdings; and contributions from Catholic dioceses, groups, and individuals. The Holy See had about $100 million in investments in 2002, with losses outstripping earnings by $18.4 million. Real estate holdings brought in roughly $50 million. This means the largest source of support came from contributions. Canon 1271 of the
Code of Canon Law
obligates bishops to provide funds to support the Holy See, just as parishes support their diocese: “By reason of their bond of unity and charity, and according to the resources of their dioceses, bishops are to join together to produce those means which the Apostolic See may from time to time need to exercise properly its service of the universal Church."

Each year the largest givers, in terms of nationality, are the Catholics of the United States, Germany, and Italy. The Vatican went through twenty-three money-losing years until 1993. The situation turned around after bishops from around the world agreed to directly assist the Vatican, with prodding from an American, Cardinal Edmund Szoka of Detroit, who was brought to Rome to help turn the economic crisis around.

But is the Vatican sitting on a large pile of wealth that doesn’t show up in its annual budget? The total patrimony of the Holy See, meaning its property holdings (including some thirty buildings and seventeen hundred apartments in Rome), its investments, its stock portfolios and capital funds, and whatever it has stored up in a piggy bank for a rainy day, comes to roughly $770 million. This is substantial, but once again one has to apply a sense of scale. What the Holy See calls patrimony is roughly what American universities mean by an endowment—in other words, funds and other assets designated to support the institution if operating funds fall short. The University of Notre Dame has an endowment of $3.5 billion, a total 4.5 times as great as the Vatican’s. Once again, when it comes to Vatican wealth, there is less “there" there than most people believe.

A word about the “Vatican Bank," technically known as the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR from its Italian acronym. According to an April 2002 report in the
Independent
, the bank manages approximately $3.5 billion in annual assets. It should be noted, however, that the IOR does not belong to the Holy See, and neither do those assets. They belong, as in any bank, to the depositors—in the case of the IOR, these include religious orders, Catholic organizations, Vatican employees, and other private individuals. Profits and dividends from the bank go to the Holy See, but they do not generate mammoth amounts of money (presuming a 10 percent rate of return, the bank might produce $3.5 million each year). The Pope cannot simply spend the Vatican Bank’s $3.5 billion in assets as if it were his own money, and the bank is precious little help in offsetting annual operating costs.

But what of the some eighteen thousand artistic treasures in the Holy See? No one’s ever done an accounting of their potential cash value, but certainly it would run into the billions. Yet the artworks are nowhere included in official Vatican figures. From the Holy See’s point of view, they are part of the artistic heritage of the world, and may never be sold or borrowed against. In 1986, facing a $56 million budget deficit, the Vatican put out a statement saying the artworks and cultural artifacts owned by the Roman Catholic Church constitute “a treasure for all humanity" and cannot be sold. In February 2002 a rumor made the rounds that Pope Paul VI had flirted with the idea of selling Michelangelo’s
Pietà
and donating the proceeds to the poor. A French book about Daniel Wildenstein, one of the world’s most famous art merchants, claimed that Paul had asked him about the logistics of arranging the sale. Vatican spokesman Navarro-Valls, however, denied the report, stating: “This news has absolutely no foundation. Indeed, it was Paul VI who, following the exposition of the
Pietà
in the United States, gave specific indications that Michelangelo’s marble sculpture should not leave the Vatican again without special permission from the Holy Father, through the Secretariat of State."

Michelangelo’s famous
Pietà
statue, the Sistine Chapel, or Raphael’s famous frescoes in the Apostolic Palace are all listed on the Vatican books at a value of 1 Euro each. In fact, those artistic treasures amount to a net drain on the Holy See’s budget, because millions of Euros have to be allocated every year for maintenance and restoration. In some cases, the Vatican wouldn’t be able to afford this work without outside support. The Nippon Television Network Corporation of Japan, for example, funded the restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to the tune of some $3 million, in exchange for the exclusive right to film sections of the frescoes in the late 1980s. One could argue that the personnel of the Holy See profit because they live and work in the midst of all this gorgeous art, but that doesn’t pay the rent or build up retirement savings. Moreover, only the lucky personnel of the Secretariat of State have offices with ceilings etched by Raphael. If you work in the Congregation for Worship, for example, or in the Council for the Laity, you’re stuck in an anonymous bureaucratic space that might as well be in the Pentagon or General Motors.

There is one other bit of mythology connected to Vatican finances. This is the notion that Catholics around the world who are dissatisfied should put pressure on the Holy See where it hurts—in the pocketbook. By withholding contributions, this line of reasoning goes, angry Catholics will get the kind of attention that keen theological argument cannot generate. This tends to be an especially common refrain in the United States, since American Catholics are the number-one contributors to the Vatican’s annual budget and because Americans are disposed to believe the credo “money talks" more than other peoples.

Again, however, reality paints a different picture. First, it does not seem that American Catholics are inclined to withhold support from the Holy See in times of discontent; in 2002, at the peak of the sex abuse scandals, American giving to the Vatican registered an increase. More to the point, even a successful boycott would seem to have limited potential. Even if we assume that the U.S. share of the Vatican’s annual budget is one-quarter, and even if we assume that every Catholic in the United States were to refuse to give a cent, that would mean a shortfall of $61.25 million. In 2002, global contributions to the Holy See went up by $55 million, so that continued increases in annual giving elsewhere might offset a boycott. If not, there are certainly enough rich Catholics in various parts of the world, fiercely loyal to the Holy See, that an emergency appeal could probably raise the difference. It would be especially likely to succeed if it were phrased as a campaign to save the Holy See from pushy Americans. If American Catholics are going to bring pressure for change onto the Holy See, they will have to find a way other than their wallets.

Any number of times I have sat down with intrepid journalists and researchers mesmerized by tales of Vatican wealth, who are without fail enormously disappointed when I lay out the reality. Sometimes a form of denial sets in. “But," they insist, “you haven’t actually seen the Vatican’s books, have you? You can’t say for sure that the Vatican doesn’t have a horde of gold stashed away somewhere, or a secret stock portfolio worth billions?" No, I can’t. I also can’t prove there’s no invisible monster under your bed. What I can say is that if the Vatican is sitting on a secret stash of riches, there’s little evidence of it in the way the institution functions. While there are a few black Mercedes limousines to ferry VIPs to and fro, and some cardinals do have fairly nice apartments, for the most part Vatican personnel do not live especially large. Most offices are sparsely furnished and rather low-tech, living quarters are plain, and salaries for most officials are strikingly low by First World standards. Hence stereotypes about the opulence of the Vatican would remain largely false, even if it could be shown that the official ledgers have somehow managed to disguise certain assets.