Pope Leo
The Pope officially abolished the Debt Collection Commission, repealed its statutes and dismissed its members. He also ordered that all assets be transferred to the Holy See and that the Vatican’s Office of Cultural Heritage would oversee the dissolution.
A new working group with members approved by the pope will be formed to develop fundraising proposals and an appropriate structure for the future, according to the decree, which was the latest sign that the first American pope in history will wrap up loose ends of Francis’ pontificate in late 2025. Leo
The creation of the commission, its statutes and its members was announced by the Vatican on February 26, when Francis was hospitalized with bilateral pneumonia.
The commission consisted entirely of Italians with no professional experience in fundraising. Its president was the adviser to the foreign minister, the same office from which Francis had previously stripped the ability to manage assets after he lost tens of millions of euros in a scandalous real estate deal in London.
The concentration of power at the secretary of state, the lack of qualified fundraisers and the absence of Americans on the board – the United States is the Vatican’s largest donor – immediately raised doubts about the commission’s credibility.
To some, it seemed as if the Italian-run secretariat was taking advantage of the pope’s illness to announce a new flow of uncontrolled donations into its coffers after Francis took away the 600 million euro ($684 million) sovereign wealth fund and gave it to another office to manage as punishment for the London fiasco.
Source of income
The American Pope’s decree appears to be an attempt to start from scratch. Donations are a crucial source of revenue for the Holy See, and wealthy American donors in particular hoped that Leo XIV, a mathematician, would bring greater financial transparency and accountability to the Vatican’s accounts.
Lion
The Holy See ended 2024 with a surplus of 1.6 million euros ($1.8 million), compared to a deficit of 51.2 million euros ($59.6 million) the previous year, according to its 2024 consolidated financial statements.
According to the report, external donations to the Holy See rose sharply after a long period of decline, reaching 237.6 million euros (US$276.6 million), around 20 million euros (US$23.2 million) more than the previous year. This additional revenue, along with better performance from Vatican-run hospitals and the Vatican’s commercial real estate sector, resulted in an increase in revenue of 79 million euros ($91.9 million).
Personnel and administrative costs rose 6%, but the report attributed the increase primarily to higher property maintenance expenses. Due to its liquidity crisis, the Vatican has been struggling for years to finance the necessary investments in its huge real estate portfolio in order to be able to demand higher rents.
The Vatican Lay Employees Association, the closest thing the Holy See has to a union, expressed skepticism about the report’s optimism and asked for more information, including the status of the Holy See’s pension fund, which was so underfunded that Francis warned it needed serious reforms to meet its obligations.
Francis, elected with a mandate to reform the Vatican’s finances, had made significant progress during his 12-year pontificate in cleaning up the Vatican’s opaque books and imposing new standards of accounting and transparency on the Holy See’s often reticent bureaucracy.
Leo
“I’m not saying we can relax and say the crisis is over,” León said in an interview with the religious newspaper Crux this summer. “I don’t think the crisis is over, I think we have to keep working on it. But I won’t lose sleep over it and I think it’s important that we communicate a different message.”
AP
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