The Vatican made a loss last year as the weaker dollar reduced the value of donations from the faithful in the United States.
Almost a quarter of the $79.8m (£40.4m) worth of offerings it received came from collections made in US churches.
But as the dollar lost 15% of its value against the euro, the Catholic Church's governing body made a loss of 9.1m euros (£7.3m: $14.3m) in 2007.
That was despite receiving a single anonymous donation of $14.3m.
In a statement it said that it had been affected "primarily to the sudden and noticeable inversion of the previous trends in exchange rates, most noticeably the US dollar".
Its latest accounts show that the Vatican made 236.7m euros in 2007 compared with outgoings of 245.8m euros.
After the US, the largest offerings - which it quotes in dollars - came from Italy, where churchgoers gave $8.6m directly to the Vatican last year and Germany, where the faithful gave $4m.
Vatican TV
The Vatican also generated revenue from a number of other sources last year, including the 4.3 million visitors to its museums, including the Sistine Chapel.
The Vatican Television Centre, which broadcasts the Pope's regular audiences in St Peter's Square and reports on his visits abroad, made a profit of almost 500,000 euros, while the Vatican Publishing House ended the year with a surplus of 1.6m euros.
But Vatican Radio and the Vatican newspaper together made a loss of 14.6m euros.
The Vatican first revealed its accounts in 1981 under Pope John Paul II to challenge the prevailing idea that it was rich.
Ha ha ha ha. Although I wonder what they spent 245.8m euros on.
From the same site
CHURCH OFFERINGS TO VATICAN
United States: $18.7m
Italy: $8.6m
Germany $4m
Spain: $2.7m
France: $2.4m
Ireland: $2.2m
Brazil: $1.4m
South Korea: $1.1m
Source: Vatican
average amount per Catholic by country for 2007 wrote:
Ireland - $0.53
USA - $0.29
South Korea - $0.25
Germany - $0.15
Italy - $0.15
Spain - $0.07
France - $0.05
Brazil - $0.01
Unless the number of Catholics is wrong, or these Catholics also donate to other charities, I can say as a God damn heretic who booked his ticket to hell a long time ago, I am easily more generous than the average Catholic.
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mr friendly guy wrote:Unless the number of Catholics is wrong, or these Catholics also donate to other charities, I can say as a God damn heretic who booked his ticket to hell a long time ago, I am easily more generous than the average Catholic.
The number of Catholics IS wrong - those are official church numbers, which count everyone who ever expressed Catholic affiliation, out of which, at the very best, a third are true practitioners, which the numbers illustrate really well actually.
mr friendly guy wrote:
Unless the number of Catholics is wrong, or these Catholics also donate to other charities, I can say as a God damn heretic who booked his ticket to hell a long time ago, I am easily more generous than the average Catholic.
Maybe it's only the money that goes to the Vatican? Most money given to church is used locally where I live.
Alone the archdiocese Salzburg(which shares Austria with archdiocese Vienna), got 35 million € from church-tax in 2007 and know that cahtolic church in Germany got 4.158 billion Euros in 2004. There is also a church tax in Switzerland afaik.
That's already a lot of money and donations should exceed that by far, at least from what I saw average people give every Sunday.
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mr friendly guy wrote:
Unless the number of Catholics is wrong, or these Catholics also donate to other charities, I can say as a God damn heretic who booked his ticket to hell a long time ago, I am easily more generous than the average Catholic.
That appears to be just money earmarked for the Vatican, which I think churches only have to funnel a bit of their donations to. I'm not certain on that by any means, but I get the impression that the bulk of donations in church go on regional stuff or national/international stuff when they do specific appeals. I'd certainly be wary of those numbers meaning total charitable donation.
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The Vatican Television Centre, which broadcasts the Pope's regular audiences in St Peter's Square and reports on his visits abroad, made a profit of almost 500,000 euros, <snip>.
Question for Europeans: are religious organizations allowed to make a profit in your nations? (In the US, religious organizations are "nonprofit organizations" and aren't taxed, but I doubt they're legally allowed to earn a profit. Edit: a few seconds' research reveals that nonprofit organizations in the US "must pay federal tax on income that is unrelated to their exempt purpose." I wonder if the Pope's TV station is subject to such an exemption?)
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They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
Erm, around here, part of your taxes go directly to the church, actually. Only recently (maybe a decade, but it's relatively recent) have they added a nice checkbox where you can decide if that percentage of your tax money goes to the catholic church, or to NGOs.
I've heard that other countries (Germany, in this case) will automatically send part of your taxes to the church simply because you've been baptized, with little choice in the matter.
All that is probably the reason why the church around here tries to make it as hard as possible to officially leave its ranks (that is, to become an apostate, I believe).
Originally, the tax was meant to repay the church for all the properties seized by the Republic's army during the civil war. Nowadays, of course, they try to justify receiving that money, even though the debt was payed long ago (I think). It's a gigantic socio-political can of worms around here.
LordOskuro wrote:
I've heard that other countries (Germany, in this case) will automatically send part of your taxes to the church simply because you've been baptized, with little choice in the matter.
I have a Greman friend whose father formally removed the family from whatever church they had been part of (I forget which one, I *think* it was the RCC) in order to avoid paying the tax. So it's possible to avoid, I guess, if you jump through the right hoops.
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The Vatican Television Centre, which broadcasts the Pope's regular audiences in St Peter's Square and reports on his visits abroad, made a profit of almost 500,000 euros, <snip>.
Question for Europeans: are religious organizations allowed to make a profit in your nations? (In the US, religious organizations are "nonprofit organizations" and aren't taxed, but I doubt they're legally allowed to earn a profit. Edit: a few seconds' research reveals that nonprofit organizations in the US "must pay federal tax on income that is unrelated to their exempt purpose." I wonder if the Pope's TV station is subject to such an exemption?)
I'd hazard a guess that The Vatican Television Centre is not a Church-based organization but rather belongs to the Vatican state, so any non-profit organization clause could not be enforced.
About religious organizations making profit in Finland: I'm honestly not sure. While from a layman's point of view it would be prudent to balance the church's budget and perhaps even end up at plus side, I don't have any clue if there would be some legal limitations. I'll have to check this one.
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The Vatican Television Centre, which broadcasts the Pope's regular audiences in St Peter's Square and reports on his visits abroad, made a profit of almost 500,000 euros, <snip>.
Question for Europeans: are religious organizations allowed to make a profit in your nations? (In the US, religious organizations are "nonprofit organizations" and aren't taxed, but I doubt they're legally allowed to earn a profit. Edit: a few seconds' research reveals that nonprofit organizations in the US "must pay federal tax on income that is unrelated to their exempt purpose." I wonder if the Pope's TV station is subject to such an exemption?)
I'd hazard a guess that The Vatican Television Centre is not a Church-based organization but rather belongs to the Vatican state, so any non-profit organization clause could not be enforced.
About religious organizations making profit in Finland: I'm honestly not sure. While from a layman's point of view it would be prudent to balance the church's budget and perhaps even end up at plus side, I don't have any clue if there would be some legal limitations. I'll have to check this one.
There are no requirements for religious organisations to be non-profit here, but if they are for-profit, they get taxed on those profits. The Finnish Lutheran Church does not run a profit because they have a shitload of expenses running all the services they do and maintaining their properties (various churches etc).
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LordOskuro wrote:
I've heard that other countries (Germany, in this case) will automatically send part of your taxes to the church simply because you've been baptized, with little choice in the matter.
I have a Greman friend whose father formally removed the family from whatever church they had been part of (I forget which one, I *think* it was the RCC) in order to avoid paying the tax. So it's possible to avoid, I guess, if you jump through the right hoops.
At least here in Austria you can opt out rather easily, I never bothered to do it though.
I asked The Lord, "Why hath thou forsaken me?" And He spoke unto me saying, "j00 R n00b 4 3VR", And I was like "stfu -_-;;"
Sidewinder wrote:Question for Europeans: are religious organizations allowed to make a profit in your nations? (In the US, religious organizations are "nonprofit organizations" and aren't taxed, but I doubt they're legally allowed to earn a profit. Edit: a few seconds' research reveals that nonprofit organizations in the US "must pay federal tax on income that is unrelated to their exempt purpose." I wonder if the Pope's TV station is subject to such an exemption?)
Since the Vatican TV Centre is owned by the sovereign Vatican City State, and insofar as I know doesn't have offices outside of Vatican territory, who would be taxing the organization?
LordOskuro wrote:
I've heard that other countries (Germany, in this case) will automatically send part of your taxes to the church simply because you've been baptized, with little choice in the matter.
I have a Greman friend whose father formally removed the family from whatever church they had been part of (I forget which one, I *think* it was the RCC) in order to avoid paying the tax. So it's possible to avoid, I guess, if you jump through the right hoops.
It is pretty easy to do so. And a lot of people do, which leads to the churches running out of money in some regions (and selling their real estate).
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Is $79.8mil all they made? Personally I find it small. I've always thought that they'd rake in billions.
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Enigma wrote:Is $79.8mil all they made? Personally I find it small. I've always thought that they'd rake in billions.
They generated €236.7mil, which is quite a bit more but still a figure that wouldn't impress the shareholders of most multinationals. Keep in mind though that this figure is only the Vatican. If you tallied up the revenues generated by all the dioceses and archdioceses worldwide in some kind of 'money made by the worldwide Catholic Church' total gross you'd end up with a far more impressive figure.
Enigma wrote:Is $79.8mil all they made? Personally I find it small. I've always thought that they'd rake in billions.
They generated €236.7mil, which is quite a bit more but still a figure that wouldn't impress the shareholders of most multinationals. Keep in mind though that this figure is only the Vatican. If you tallied up the revenues generated by all the dioceses and archdioceses worldwide in some kind of 'money made by the worldwide Catholic Church' total gross you'd end up with a far more impressive figure.
What would be a ballpark figure?
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No idea of how this compares with the rest of the world, but in Spain the COPE radio station alone -over 70% of the shares owned by the different organizations of the Spanish Catholic Church- had a gross income of roughly one hundred million euros and pre-tax operating earnings of roughly five millions. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, because the different organizations have rather large portfolios.
They also get around one hundred and fifty millions out of the transferences connected with the income tax option, plus a bit more that they are paid directly because of the agreements signed some twenty years ago between Spain and the Vatican. And, of course, the government pays for the teaching of religion in the public education system, even though it has an almost obscene level of authority over the teachers (many cases in court for abuse of power after firing teachers who marry divorcees or something like that).
In other news, they don't pay the income tax, just like non-profit NGOs; didn't pay the income tax for cult items until very recently; and the maintenance of temples that are considered of cultural value is financed by the government.
"
- PeZook
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)
