Is the Church Too Rich?

The voluntary poverty of Christ

Jesus is not merely a teacher who recommends moderation: he is born in a manger^[1], lives with no fixed residence, is laid in the new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea^[2] and sends his disciples out with neither purse nor bag (Lk 10:4)^[3]. The poverty of Christ is not a biographical accident but a theological choice, which he claims as his own before a scribe who wanted to follow him:

"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." — Jesus, Matthew 8:20^[4]

Saint Paul will take up this voluntary poverty as a central mystery of faith in Christ:

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich he became poor, for your sakes; that through his poverty you might be rich." — Saint Paul, 2 Corinthians 8:9^[5]

Jesus' warning against Mammon is then explicit and uncompromising. He sets God and money as two rival masters that cannot be served simultaneously:

"No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." — Jesus, Matthew 6:24^[6]

Riches can thus become a rival idol. The rich young man goes away "sorrowful" when Jesus asks him to sell all his goods and give them to the poor — "for he had great possessions" (Mt 19:22)^[7]. And Jesus adds the most famous image in the whole Gospel on this point:

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." — Jesus, Matthew 19:24^[8]

The primitive community: a radical experiment

The first Christians of Jerusalem attempted an experiment in sharing that remains in the Church's memory as an anticipation of the Kingdom:

"And all they that believed, were together, and had all things common. Their possessions and goods they sold, and divided them to all, according as every one had need." — Acts 2:44-45^[9]

"And the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul: neither did any one say that aught of the things which he possessed, was his own; but all things were common unto them. [...] For neither was there any one needy among them. For as many as were owners of lands or houses, sold them, and brought the price of the things they sold, and laid it down before the feet of the apostles. And distribution was made to every one, according as he had need." — Acts 4:32-35^[10]

This experiment was not generalised by the Church as an absolute canonical rule — the Church respects private property as a natural right (cf. Rerum Novarum §10)^[11] — but it stands as a permanent normative horizon: goods are not bad in themselves, but they must circulate towards real needs.

The scene at Bethany: beauty and poverty are not opposed

The Gospel offers a key passage that nuances the stark opposition between sacred art and service to the poor. At Bethany, Mary pours over Jesus' feet a pound of pure nard worth three hundred denarii — the equivalent of a year's wages. Judas Iscariot protests: "Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?" Jesus answers: "Let her alone, that she may keep it against the day of my burial. For the poor you have always with you; but me you have not always." (Jn 12:7-8)^[12].

The evangelist immediately notes that Judas was not sincerely concerned about the poor: "Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief" (Jn 12:6)^[13]. The scene does not condemn attention to the poor — it presupposes it. It condemns the false pretext: instrumentalising the poor to criticise a gesture of beauty offered to God. The Catholic tradition draws from it a lasting lesson: liturgical beauty and service to the poor are not mechanically opposed. Both have their place; one does not cancel the obligation of the other.

The patristic tradition on wealth is one of the sharpest in Catholic theology. The Fathers are not moderate on this point: they go so far as to call it a structural injustice not to share one's superfluous goods.

Chrysostom: "we do not possess our riches, but those of the poor"

Saint John Chrysostom (c. 345-407), Archbishop of Constantinople and Doctor of the Church, is the most radical voice of the tradition on this subject. His collection of six homilies On Wealth and Poverty (Peri philoptôchias — commentaries on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Lk 16) contains this formula, so forceful that it was incorporated into the Catechism of the Catholic Church at § 2446:

"Not to share our own riches with the poor is a robbery of the poor, and a depriving them of their living: and we do not possess our own riches, but theirs." — Saint John Chrysostom, On Wealth and Poverty (Peri philoptôchias), Homily II^[14]

In his Homilies on Matthew, Chrysostom addresses directly those who adorn altars with gold while the poor lack bread, with a frankness that leaves no comfortable escape: what is the use, he says in substance in homily 50, of offering Christ a golden cup when you refuse him a cup of cold water? First satisfy the hungry man, and then adorn his table abundantly^[15].

He develops in another homily an arithmetic of solidarity: if the rich, he says in substance, divided among themselves those who lack bread and clothing, there would hardly fall a single poor man to fifty or even a hundred men^[16]

His theory of property is radical: riches accumulated beyond necessity belong morally to the poor. This is not a modern socialist idea: it is the constant patristic doctrine, taken up by Basil, Ambrose and Augustine, and incorporated into the Catechism in the twentieth century.

Basil of Caesarea: "all that you keep, you have stolen from them"

Saint Basil of Caesarea (329-379), Cappadocian Father and organiser of monasticism in the East, delivered two homilies of remarkable severity. Homily 6 (In illud dictum evangelii secundum Lucam — commentary on Lk 12:18) establishes that goods kept for oneself are goods stolen from the poor:

"The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry; to the naked the cloak which you keep in your chests; to the shoeless the shoe which rots in your house; to the needy the silver which you keep buried. So you commit as many injustices as there are people to whom you could give." — Saint Basil of Caesarea, Homily 6 on the Rich Fool (In illud dictum evangelii, Lk 12:18)^[17]

The Homily Against the Rich (Adversus divites) goes further still:

"All that you have beyond necessity, you have stolen from the poor." — Saint Basil of Caesarea, Homily Against the Rich (Adversus divites)^[18]

"Common goods, which they occupied first, they make their own property, for this reason that they took them first." — Saint Basil of Caesarea, Homily Against the Rich^[19]

This theology of the "morally stolen superfluous" is directly linked to the classic Catholic doctrine on the universal destination of goods, later codified in the CCC (§ 2402) and the social encyclicals.

Ambrose of Milan: selling the sacred vessels to ransom the captives

Saint Ambrose of Milan (339-397), bishop and Doctor of the Church, put his theology into practice spectacularly. In the aftermath of the disaster of Adrianople (378), the Goths carried off immense crowds of captives from Thrace and Illyricum; to ransom them, Ambrose exhausted the resources of his Church and then ordered the sacred vessels to be melted down^[20]. When the faithful accused him of sacrilege, he answered with a formula that has ever since defined the Church's relationship to her material goods:

"The Church has gold, not to hoard, but to distribute and to come to the aid of those in need." — Saint Ambrose of Milan, De Officiis ministrorum, II, 28, 136-137^[21]

He makes the hierarchy precise: it is better to save human bodies than to keep metal vessels. Objects of worship are precious because they serve charity; when charity imperatively demands it, they may be sacrificed. It is another formula of Ambrose — "It is not from your goods that you give alms to the poor, you return to him what belongs to him" — that Paul VI will expressly quote in Populorum Progressio (§ 23) to ground the modern doctrine on the universal destination of goods^[22].

In his De Nabuthae historia, Ambrose lashes out at the great landowners who push their estates ever further:

"How far, O rich, do you extend your mad desires and claim possession of the earth? Nature knows no rich men, she brings us all forth poor." — Saint Ambrose of Milan, De Nabuthae historia, ch. 1, 1^[23]

Augustine: using goods without loving them

Saint Augustine (354-430), in his De Doctrina Christiana, establishes a fundamental anthropological distinction between uti (to use) and frui (to enjoy). Material goods must be used towards an ultimate end, never enjoyed for themselves. Only God deserves pure enjoyment (frui); every created thing, including money, is only an instrument (uti)^[24]. Keeping riches in order to enjoy them is therefore an anthropological fault before being a social one.

In his sermons on almsgiving, he challenges his faithful on what it really means to possess "too much": the superfluity of some is the necessity of others, and withholding what the poor need resembles an injustice^[25].

These four Fathers — all Doctors of the Church, all integrated into the magisterium and the Catechism — leave no doubt about the Catholic tradition: possessing riches creates a moral obligation towards the poor, and the Church cannot preach poverty while forgetting it in her own practice.

Rerum Novarum (1891): legitimate property, ordered use

The Catholic Church does not condemn private property: Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII, 15 May 1891) affirms that it is "of natural right" (§ 10)^[26]. But the same document immediately conditions this use. §§ 21-23 specify that he who receives "a greater abundance" must devote it to the "relief of others", and that man must not hold his lawful goods "as his own exclusive possession"^[27].

Gaudium et Spes (1965): the universal destination of goods

Vatican II takes up and radicalises this doctrine in the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, promulgated by Paul VI on 7 December 1965. § 69, entitled "Earthly goods are destined for all men", gives the strongest conciliar formulation of the principle:

"God destined the earth and all it contains for all men and all peoples so that all created things would be shared fairly by all mankind under the guidance of justice tempered by charity. [...] Man, when he uses these goods, must regard the external things which he lawfully possesses, not merely as his own, but also as common, in the sense that they can benefit not only himself but others as well." — Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, § 69 (7 December 1965)^[28]

This principle — the universal destination of goods — is explicitly prior and superior to the right of private property in Catholic doctrine. Private property is legitimate but subordinate: it does not abolish the universal destination, it organises it concretely.

Populorum Progressio (1967): the limit to the right of property

Paul VI, in Populorum Progressio (26 March 1967), formulates the clearest doctrine on the limits of the right of property. He expressly quotes Ambrose (§ 23) to establish:

"Private property does not constitute for anyone an absolute and unconditioned right. No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities." — Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, § 23 (26 March 1967)^[29]

John Paul II specifies in Centesimus Annus (1991): "God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favouring anyone" (§ 31)^[30].

Canon law: three purposes of ecclesial goods

The 1983 Code of Canon Law frames the Church's goods juridically. Canon 1254 §1 recognises the Church's natural right to acquire and manage goods. But §2 immediately defines their three proper purposes ("principally"):

"The Church, by reason of an innate right, is able independently of civil power to acquire, retain, administer, and alienate temporal goods in pursuit of its proper ends." — Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 1254, §1^[31]

These three canonical purposes at §2 are:

1. To order public worship
2. To provide for the decent support of the clergy and other ministers
3. To carry out the works of the sacred apostolate and of charity, especially towards the poor

Every ecclesial good must be justified by one of these three purposes. A good that serves neither worship, nor ministers, nor the poor is canonically orphaned. Canon 1284 obliges all ecclesiastical administrators to fulfil their office "with the diligence of a good householder"^[32] — prudently, honestly and transparently.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992)

The CCC devotes §§ 2401-2463 (the whole article on the 7th commandment — the 8th begins at § 2464) to social justice and material goods. It first states the guiding principle, inherited from Genesis and Vatican II, at § 2402:

"In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits (cf. Gen 1:26-29). The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2402^[33]

It then quotes Chrysostom directly at § 2446:

"Instead of doing what you do with your possessions, you ought to give to the poor what belongs to them. For what was given in common for the use of all, that is what you have made your own. The earth belongs to everyone, and not to the rich." — CCC § 2446, quoting Saint John Chrysostom, In Lazaro 2, 5^[34]

And it solemnly synthesises: "Love for the poor belongs to the Church's constant tradition" (§ 2444)^[35]. §§ 2544-2547 add the dimension of the evangelical counsels: Jesus invites his disciples to radical detachment — which applies first to religious, but orients all Catholic spirituality towards non-attachment to goods.

The myth of the unlimited treasure

The popular press regularly cites figures of "500 billion" or "1,000 billion" to assess the wealth of the worldwide Catholic Church. These estimates are methodologically fragile: they aggregate without distinction Vatican finances, those of thousands of independent dioceses, Catholic social works, priceless (and therefore non-monetisable) artistic collections, parish lands, hospitals, universities and convents^[36]. The resulting figure has no economic meaning: selling a Catholic hospital that treats a thousand patients a day does not "free up" money — it removes a public service that nothing is planned to replace.

Artistic heritage: priceless does not mean liquid

The Vatican Museums hold some 70,000 works of art, of which 20,000 are permanently exhibited — Byzantine mosaics, Greek and Roman sculptures, frescoes by Raphael and Michelangelo, medieval manuscripts^[37]. These collections are described as priceless by experts, not by rhetorical hyperbole, but because their market value is impossible to establish: no private buyer could legally acquire them, they are listed as UNESCO world heritage, and selling them would mean their definitive dispersal beyond public access.

In practical terms, the Vatican Museums generate about €100 million a year in tourist revenue — an estimate by Rome Reports, corroborated by the ERCouncil — from 6.83 million visitors in 2024 (the world's second most visited museum after the Louvre), which funds a significant share of the Vatican City State's budget^[38]. This "treasure" is therefore not hoarded: it is placed at the service of the Vatican mission.

The Holy See's 2024 consolidated finances

The 2024 consolidated financial report of the Secretariat for the Economy, published in November 2025, offers the most recent consolidated data for the Holy See^[39]:

These figures call for several observations. The €6.3 billion consolidated balance sheet mainly includes APSA real-estate assets, financial investments and equipment — works of art being accounted for separately as cultural heritage. The €1.6 million surplus is tiny against €367 million in expenditure: room for manoeuvre is structurally fragile, not comfortable. The €44 million operating deficit shows that without financial investment income and donations, the Holy See would be in chronic deficit.

Far from an unlimited treasure, the Vatican looks more like a large global NGO whose budget is tight, whose staff costs are high, and whose dependence on donations is real.

The Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) in 2024

The IOR — often wrongly called the "Vatican bank" — manages the assets of religious congregations, dioceses, foundations and priests. Its 2024 report states^[40]:

The IOR does not lend, does not speculate and does not seek profitability in the commercial sense: it manages and preserves. Its exceptional soundness (a 69% Tier 1 ratio, where commercial banks maintain 10-15%) reflects this conservative mission.

The 2025 IOR report, published at the Vatican on 11 May 2026, confirms this trajectory: net profit of €51 million (+55.5% over 2024), and a dividend of €24.3 million paid to the pope to support religious and charitable works^[41].

APSA real estate

The Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) manages the Holy See's real-estate patrimony: over 5,000 property units — 4,249 in Italy alone, 92% of them in the province of Rome^[42]. These properties include diplomatic chanceries, bishoprics, seats of Roman congregations, clergy housing, schools and guest houses. Their purpose is not speculative but institutional.

The Church in France: a structurally loss-making institution

The French example radically nuances the fantasy of wealth. According to the 2024 accounts of the diocesan associations, current donations amounted to €623m, but day-to-day operations remain structurally in deficit: for every €100 of current resources, €121 of charges — balance is achieved only through bequests and asset disposals, by nature unpredictable^[43]. Diocesan real estate is essentially for worship and pastoral use (churches built after 1905 at the dioceses' expense) and costs more than it brings in^[44]. The Catholic Church in France actually lives in permanent financial tension, offset by the donations of the faithful and the prudent management of her patrimony.

The most eloquent figure answering the objection is not that of the patrimony, but that of the service institutions. The statistics of the Fides agency (worldwide ecclesial data as of 31 December 2022) record the worldwide Catholic network^[45]:

The world's largest non-governmental health network

The world's largest non-governmental education network

These 102,409 health and assistance institutions constitute the world's largest non-governmental humanitarian network. "Selling the Church's riches" would also mean dismantling the network that produces them.

The contrast is decisive: the objection often targets walls, museums or Roman accounts; the Fides figures show above all a daily infrastructure of care and education, particularly present in countries where the State does not cover all basic needs.

Peter's Pence 2024: €58 million collected, 239 projects

Peter's Pence — the annual worldwide collection for the pope's charitable works — raised €58 million in 2024^[46]. These funds financed 239 projects in 66 countries:

Direct charitable aid reached €13.3 million for the most destitute, the rest supporting the Holy See's apostolic mission (dicasteries, nunciatures, priestly formation).

Defending the Church would be dishonest if it passed over in silence the serious financial crises that have stained her credibility. These scandals do not prove that "the Church is too rich" in the generic sense, but they reveal real failures of governance, opacity and sometimes corruption that must be named clearly.

Banco Ambrosiano (1982): the IOR and Roberto Calvi

The collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano bank in June 1982 is the most serious financial scandal in modern Vatican history. The Milanese bank, chaired by Roberto Calvi — nicknamed in the press "God's banker" — had accumulated $1.287 billion in unrecorded debts via shell companies in Luxembourg and the Bahamas^[47].

The IOR, then headed by the American archbishop Paul Marcinkus, had issued "letters of patronage" used by Calvi as implicit guarantees to creditor banks^[48]. Roberto Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London on 18 June 1982 — forensic re-examinations and then the Italian investigation concluded it was murder^[49]. Alleged links exist with Licio Gelli's P2 (Propaganda Due) Masonic lodge and the Cosa Nostra. In 1984, the IOR paid $224 million to 120 Banco Ambrosiano creditors in "recognition of a moral involvement" — without admitting legal liability^[50].

The London flat and the conviction of Cardinal Becciu (2023)

Between 2014 and 2018, the Vatican Secretariat of State invested €350 million in the purchase of a luxury building in Chelsea, London. The management of this investment led to an estimated loss of between €140 and €190 million on resale^[51]. The trial before the Vatican civil tribunal concluded on 16 December 2023 with the first-instance conviction of Cardinal Angelo Becciu to 5 years and 6 months' imprisonment, a lifetime ban from office and an €8,000 fine, for the misappropriation of $200.5 million — the first Vatican trial to convict a cardinal^[52]. Nine other defendants were also convicted. The cardinal appealed: on 17 March 2026, the Vatican court of appeal pronounced a partial annulment of the first-instance trial for procedural errors by the promoter of justice, and set 22 June 2026 as the first hearing of the partial retrial^[53]. At the beginning of October 2026, proceedings were still open and no verdict of the partial retrial was publicly known; the cardinal, who has always denied the facts, remains presumed innocent until final judgment.

The Francis reforms (2013-2025): a positive but unfinished record

These reforms represent real progress documented by outside bodies. Independent observers note that transparency remains partial and that the culture of opacity has not been entirely dissolved — but the direction is clearly towards better governance.^[57]

The legal and canonical problem

The Church's goods are not freely alienable. Canon law distinguishes precious goods (canons 1291-1298), goods of patrimonial interest (requiring the authorisation of the Holy See above certain thresholds), and goods assigned to worship (requiring specific procedures before any alienation)^[58]. In France, cathedrals have belonged to the State since the 1905 law: the Church has their use but cannot sell them. A good one does not own cannot be "sold for the poor".

The common good rather than private accumulation

An artistic or architectural patrimony such as the Vatican Museums, the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims or Cologne, or the Apostolic Archives is not the private property of an institution: it is a common good of humanity that the Church administers on behalf of all. Selling part of it would mean definitively privatising a patrimony built by generations of Christians and financed by collective devotion — turning it into an object of private speculation in hands with no public-service obligation whatsoever.

The logic is the reverse of what the slogan supposes: "selling the Church's riches" would not distribute riches to the poor, it would transfer a collective patrimony to private owners accountable to no one.

The lesson of the scene at Bethany

The Gospel of John recalls that the argument "sell this for the poor" has already been made — and by someone whose motives were not pure (Jn 12:4-6)^[59]. This is not a decisive argument against all financial criticism, but it is a useful reminder: instrumentalising the cause of the poor to criticise worship and liturgical beauty is not always pure generosity. The beauty of a cathedral or a work of sacred art is not experienced as personal wealth by the believers who pray there — it is a spiritual elevation that the poor too can experience freely. Chrysostom himself did not say that altars must be bare: he said that altars cannot be adorned with gold while men starve at their door.

What the Church absolutely must do better

The Catholic answer cannot be merely defensive. The patristic, magisterial and canonical tradition is clear: the Church's goods have determined purposes, and any deviation — personal luxury, financial speculation, accounting opacity, careerism protected by money — is a betrayal of the Gospel. What the Church must do better is undeniable:

1. Total accounting transparency — publication of diocesan and parish budgets with the level of detail that States require of associations.
2. Sobriety of episcopal and curial residences — scandal comes not from hospitals or museums, but from the personal lifestyles of clerics.
3. Independent audit — control bodies with real independence from local hierarchies.
4. Priority to the poor in all budgetary decisions, in accordance with canon 1254 §2.
5. Effective sanctions without delay in cases of financial abuse — the Becciu trial partially demonstrated this.

Evangelical poverty and institutional means: an inseparable unity

The Catholic tradition refuses the alternative the objection often poses: liturgical beauty or charity, art or service to the poor. Ambrose sold chalices to ransom captives, but he did not demolish his cathedral. The question is not to abolish the beauty of worship: it is to ensure that poverty is never forgotten in institutional priorities. Francis said it from the first days of his pontificate:

"Ah, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor!" — Pope Francis, meeting with journalists, 16 March 2013^[60]

This "poverty for the poor" does not mean institutional disintegration: it means that the poor are the compass of all the Church's financial choices.

And the last word perhaps belongs to Chrysostom, who was not afraid to shake his own rich faithful at Constantinople, showing them that solidarity is accessible even to the poor: the tradition of his preaching on almsgiving reports that he encouraged even the most destitute to share the little they have.

The Church is too rich where her goods serve prestige, opacity or career. She is not too rich because she possesses cathedrals, schools, hospitals, museums and archives. The Gospel, the Fathers and canon law offer an answer more demanding and more coherent than the slogan: converted, transparent goods, ordered to worship, mission and the poor — and accountable, sanctionable managers.

• The charity of the Catholic Church — the world's largest non-governmental humanitarian network.
• The abuse crisis in the Catholic Church — when institutional power betrays the Gospel.
• Black slavery — Catholic history and doctrine.
• History argues in favour of Catholicism — reading history without slogans.
• Is the Church against sexuality? — another major apologetic objection.
• The Inquisition — the historical truth behind the black legend.