Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [21]
International philanthropy by the pope is a recent phenomenon in history. Across the last century Peter’s Pence proved pivotal to the Holy See, but the money’s major role was not to help the needy but to plug Vatican operating deficits. In 1985, a year after the Holy See agreed to pay three banks $242 million to resolve Vatican Bank complicity in the collapse of Roberto Calvi’s Banco Ambrosiano, the Vatican Bank was unable to cover the Vatican operating deficit of $39.14 million. “The deficit has been mainly covered by the Peter’s Pence and other free offerings to the Holy Father, which amount to $36,927,811,” noted the General Final Balance Sheet.5
On November 18, 1987, Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia spoke to a Vatican economic commission about the Holy See’s finances. A son of Polish immigrants, Krol was confident and socially conservative, but at the same time, in following the U.S. bishops’ line against nuclear arms, a critic of the Reagan defense policy. Krol also raised major funds for the Polish resistance, thereby cementing good ties with John Paul II. That day in 1987 he complained of the Roman Curia’s expanding bureaucracy. The Vatican city-state met its expenses, but the Curia ran way over budget. “None of these offices has anything to do with the IOR, sometimes called the Vatican Bank, which is truly a service agency operated autonomously under the direction of some cardinals and a director,” said Krol, elliptically. (IOR stands for Istituto per le Opere di Religione—Institute for Religious Works—otherwise known as the Vatican Bank.) Krol omitted Archbishop Paul Marcinkus’s role in allowing IOR to launder mob money for Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Sindona had died in prison, poisoned, and Calvi had been found hanging from a bridge in London.6 A native of Illinois, Marcinkus used diplomatic immunity to evade Italian subpoenas by staying inside Vatican City. When the storm passed, Marcinkus moved to Arizona and passed his sunset years playing golf. In the Vatican style of exquisite courtesy to hierarchs, Krol on that day in 1987 spoke not of the financial debacle caused by Marcinkus but of its prosaic offshoot: the Vatican operating deficit.
Traditionally, Peter’s Pence is to be collected for the Holy Father’s charities, but with the reduction of the income and the increase of costs, a move was made first of all to take money from the Peter’s Pence, and eventually to take all of the revenue from Peter’s Pence. The Holy Father does receive, when people visit him, gifts of money. The gifts that are not earmarked for specific charities, also became available and were used to cover the deficits. As of this stage, the reserve—if it can be called that—is insufficient to cover the anticipated deficit.7
Krol did not want charitable donations sent to Peter’s Pence from the various national churches diverted to cover salaries or costs of the Curial bureaucracy. On a 1987 budget of $132.6 million, the Holy See overspent by $63.8 million. “The resulting shortfall was covered by support from Peter’s Pence amounting to $50,299,858.32,” reported the 1987 Statement of Income and Expenditure. Moreover, $13.5 million came from “other sources … including the limited resources of accumulated reserves which have now been completely exhausted.”8 Krol was blunt on the matter of charitable money: “The Peter’s Pence money must go back to the pope for the needs of the poor.”9
In 1991 Cardinal Edmund C. Szoka, who had left his post as archbishop of Detroit to oversee Vatican City finances, told a conference of U.S. bishops that the Holy See’s operating deficit was $86.3 million. “He said the practice of using Peter’s Pence to help cover Vatican deficits, adopted as a matter of necessity in recent years, ought to stop,” reported Catholic News Service.10 Sandro Magister, the distinguished religion correspondent for Rome’s L’Espresso, offered new insight in 2009. “Money is also sent by the religious