I've lost track of the number of times people have told me about the 'enormous wealth of the Vatican'. Some are confused: they think the Vatican owns all the Church's worldwide real estate, lock, stock and barrel. Others think that all that art could be sold for the poor without adverting to the difficulty of selling Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling or the rooms containing the Stanze of Raphael.
Most just think the Vatican is corrupt and busy laundering vast sums of Mafia money through the 'Vatican Bank'. The papacy hasn't helped itself with its insistence on an absurd level of secrecy and its earlier involvement with criminals like Sindona and Calvi.
Well, now for the first time we actually have some hard facts.
Benedict XVI has been determined to clean up the Holy See's finances. In February 2011 he called in the Council of Europe's experts on anti-money laundering and financing of terrorism, Moneyval. Moneyval and their 241 page July 2012 report (plus annexes) gives us an enormous trove of factual material about the Vatican.
Before dealing with the money, some other interesting facts. As Moneyval says 'although the Holy See (HS) is not a state in itself, it has sovereignty over the Vatican City State (VCS) which is the smallest sovereign state in the world'. It is the HS, not the VCS, which is officially recognised by governments like Australia.
VCS is 44 hectares in area with 595 citizens with 348 of these living outside the VCS. You become a citizen not by birth but by office, that is by appointment to a specific job for the HS/VCS. Citizenship is lost upon the termination of that employment.
With six million visitors annually the VCS needs its own 137-strong police and security force, or Gendarmeria; most are ex-Italian police. Crime rates are very low and mainly involve petty thieving, almost all occurring among the tourists.
Moneyval's main focus was on the HS's two financial institutions: the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), the 'Vatican Bank', and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).
The IOR (founded in 1942) essentially operates as a commercial bank whose customer-focus is on deposits 'destined for religious works or charity'. It can also take deposits for other purposes, although its customer-base is restricted almost entirely to religious orders, dioceses, parishes, seminaries, bishops, HS departments, employees and retired employees of the VCS.