UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody
Posted on November 27, 2016 by Betty Clermont
The Vatican’s assets are estimated at $16-18 billion, its bureaucrats are still engaged in financial fraud, corruption and possible money laundering and most of the donations to the pope for charity are withheld from the poor.
On Nov. 20, Pope Francis created an annual observance for a “Day of the Poor.” In an interview broadcast that same evening, he declared, “One must always struggle for a poor Church for the poor, according to the Gospel.”
An April 2015 article in the Italian financial news, Il Sole 24 Ore, stated the assets – securities, commercial real estate and bank accounts – of all the Vatican departments and offices combined “by a conservative estimate” would be around 15-17 billion euro (approx. $16-18 billion). No outsider can be sure because Pope Francis hides almost all his fortune from any independent audits or disclosures.
The Vatican’s September 2016 ratification of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) was dismissed as mere “window dressing” because the Holy See asserted it did not have to participate in any “mechanism or body to assist in the effective implementation of the Convention.” The UNCAC “covers a wide-range of corruption offences, including domestic and foreign bribery, embezzlement, trading in influence and money laundering.”
“As far as the Italian government is concerned, there is still a money laundering risk in the Vatican City State,” according to a May 2016 article. “Operations between the Vatican Bank (officially known as the Institute for Religious Works or IOR) and Italy’s banks have still not resumed fully,” referring to Vatican accounts frozen in Roman banks by the Italian government in 2010 for suspected money laundering.
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