Vatican reports good profit as Leo tackles its finances
VATICAN CITY—The office that manages Vatican investments and real estate on Tuesday reported a profit last year of 62 million euros (around $63 million), up 16 million euros from 2023.
It’s one of the best results in years and a bit of good news as Pope Leo XIV begins to tackle the Holy See’s long-standing financial crisis.
In its 2024 report, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (Apsa) said it had directed 46 million euros of those earnings to fund the Holy See’s operating costs.
Some 10.5 million euros came from good returns on investments, while the Vatican’s real estate earnings equaled its 2023 results, the report said.
Math major
For years, the Vatican had been running a structural deficit of 50 to 60 million euros. It is also facing a pension fund shortfall of 1 billion euros.
This critical scenario represents one of the greatest challenges facing Leo at the start of his pontificate.
The Chicago-born math major, though, is said to have a head for numbers, can read a balance sheet and make sense of the Vatican’s complicated finances, which have long been mired in scandal.
Residents and priests in the Peruvian city of Chiclayo—whose diocese the Pope headed 10 years ago as then Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost—said he knows well how to raise money and spend wisely.
Prevost at that time was often on the lookout for broken down cars that he could buy cheap and fix up himself, by just learning from YouTube videos. The vehicles were used in parishes around his diocese.
Leo’s agenda, in his first weeks in office, has been filled with meetings on the Vatican’s various financial entities.
Undervalued properties
The Vatican has 4,234 properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris and Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value.
Some 70 percent generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices. The remaining 11 percent are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees.
These assets generated only 35 million euros last year, essentially equaling the profit in 2023.
The Apsa report blamed the flat results on the higher costs in maintaining the properties, with 3.8 million euros spent on maintenance alone in 2024.
Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue.
