WELL-HEELED VICAR
Taking care of.people's souls is a lucrative business, This is the unmistakable conclusion to be drawn from an article about the wealth of the Vatican in the March 27 Eeonomist which is not without a note of envy.
The deepest secrecy is “maintained on the holdings of the Vatican and its far-flung financial transactions.
"But one can put two and two together," says The Economist; "and they add up in thousands of millions. The most conservative estimate that it is reasonable to make establishes the Vatican =~ or rather the Pope, for his rule-is absolute -- as far and away ‘the world's largest shareholder, with a portfolio of quoted securities the world over totalling the equivalent of over £2,000 million | [#5,600,000,000]. Of this, only about a tenth is held in Italy. The Vatican is therefore an international financial power of formidable size, with realisable assets roughly equal to, say, the official gold and foreign exchange reserves of France itself. And by comparison, the portfolio of England's Church Commissioners is a mere £213 million. Even the dollar securities held by the British Government, valued at something over $1,000 million, are only around one-fifth of the Vatican's little nest-egg of marketable stock, which as investment portfolios go is exceeded only by the largest American mutual life insurance companies. And while, as needs to be reiterated, this estimate is very rough indeed, based on upward extrapola-
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tion, it is also conservative; and it takes’ no account of the Vatican's additional.and incalculable wealth, from land and real. estate all over the world to what is equally certainly the world's most ‘ valuable art collection. If this and all the other physical assets could possibly be valued, they would surely put the »2,000 million itself in the shade, The art treasures are buried in the Vatican palaces, and in. the basilicas and extra-territorial papal properties in Rome, Loreto, Assissi and Padua, They are priceless -= even ' Christie's would surely quail at putting the Sistine Chapel under the hammer,"
Describing the Vatican's capitalist holdings in Italy, The Economist declares: "The Holy See, according to these estimates, owns approximately one-fifteenth of the total stock of shares quoted on Italian stock exchanges. The total value of all these shares was estimated at December 31, 1964, at 5,500 billion lire. This puts the amount of capital invested by the Vatican in Italian stocks at. around £200 million. This data tends rather to underestimate the Vatican's investments, while the anti-clerical press puts forward astronomical figures according to which the Vatican — owns three-quarters of Italian shares, which is absurdly improbable.
“But the Holy See's Italian portfolio represents only a small fraction of the whole of its world investments. Exactly what frac-_ tion, it is difficult to say. The best estimate, on opinion generally close to Vatican sources, is that investments in Italy represent between one-tenth and one-twelfth of the whole: it is this that gives the figure of £2,000 million as a minimum in the Vaticants world portfolio."
As The Economist points out, the Pope is not merely a capitalist. He is also a landlord, owning real estate on several continents. "These are old acquisitions or bequests. These posses= sions must not be confused with the far larger properties of innumerable Catholic ecclesiastical bodies -- bishoprics, convents, colleges -- which are, as property, completely independent of the Holy See,
"The Holy See is a particularly big landlord in the Rome area. It owns whole blocks of houses and hundreds of flats, as well as big stretches of land on the outskirts of the city. These have been highly valuable in the building boom of recent years. The Vatican — continues to build new blocks of flats, and lets. flats to its own ~ officials,"
In its attitude toward rents and profits, the Vatican follows precepts different from those laid down in the scriptures, “The Special Administration's activities have always been conducted with masterly prudence and skill. Its position is, of course, unique. Every banker and finance minister in the world must envy its administrators their freedom of.action. It is absolute: they have neither parliament, nor cabinet, nor shareholders! assembly to
answer to. They pay no tax on Vatican territory. They fear no. drain of funds. They can undertake very long-term operations and operate in no matter which country, since they ignore frontiers and have capital available everywhere, through an efficient system of internal clearing. The diplomatic privileges cf the Holy See facilitate their task. Their contacts allow them to keep constantly informed of all happenings, economic or political, likely to influence the financial situation."
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