Property of the Roman Catholic Church

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The assets of the Roman Catholic Church consist of the assets of the Holy See , the dioceses and organizations and companies associated with the Roman Catholic Church . In addition to income from church taxes , church contributions , donations and income from economic ventures and investments, government subsidies and tax benefits are also decisive factors influencing church financing. The financial circumstances of church bodies and institutions are extremely different in different parts of the universal church and its local churches .

Overview of some countries

Holy See - Vatican and Italy

The administration of real estate, investments and liquidity of the Curia has been the responsibility of the Administratio Patrimonii Sedis Apostolicae (APSA) since 1967 . The Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR) is a bank owned by the Holy See.

The total holdings of shares and other equity interests in the Vatican was estimated in 1958 at around 50 billion DM. In 2007 there was talk of assets between 1.2 and 12 billion euros, including gold reserves in Switzerland and the United States, real estate, Treasury bonds, stocks and fixed-income securities. According to the news magazine L'Espresso , the assets of the Vatican Bank IOR are around six billion euros.

Germany

financial assets

In 2001, the social scientist Carsten Frerk examined the fortunes of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany . According to his calculations, at the end of 2002 the values ​​of real estate, real estate, investments and holdings of the Catholic Church and the institutions belonging to it added up to assets of 270 billion euros. The Roman Catholic Church is the largest private landowner in Germany with 8250 km² of real estate. Frerk carried out new calculations in 2013, according to which the assets of the Catholic Church in 2013 amounted to up to 200 billion euros. The church's main sources of income are church taxes, income from property and state benefits.

The Weltbild publishing group belonged to twelve Catholic dioceses. In January 2014, the Weltbild publishing group filed for bankruptcy because they had refused further funding.

As of October 25, 2016, the assets of the Archdiocese of Paderborn amounted to 4.16 billion euros; the Archdiocese of Cologne has 3.35 billion euros, the Diocese of Limburg over 1.001 billion euros. As of December 31, 2017, the archdiocese of Munich and Freising had assets of 5.96 billion euros.

earnings and expenses

This article or section needs to be revised. Details should be given on the talk page. Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

When the Weimar Constitution came into force on August 14, 1919, the German state undertook to make annual compensation payments to religious societies for the expropriation of church property in the 18th and 19th centuries ( secularization ). The Weimar Constitution also stipulates that state services to religious societies should be replaced by the states by means of state legislation. Some of these church building loads have now been replaced (as of 2016).

Article 138, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law of 1949, which was taken over from the Weimar Constitution, says “The state services to religious societies based on law, contract or special legal titles will be replaced by state legislation. The empire establishes the principles for this. "

Austria

Monasteries belonging to the Roman Catholic Church house great cultural treasures and are marketed for tourism, such as the Admont and Melk Monasteries .

Admont Abbey has large forest holdings and operates a biomass cogeneration plant with waste from the wood industry.

Large parts of the Gurktal in Carinthia are canteen property of the church.

Switzerland

According to a "conservative" estimate of the business magazine ECO of the Swiss Radio and Television , the annual revenue of the Catholic Church in Switzerland account for almost one billion francs; the income came mainly from church taxes; the assets of the Catholic parishes in Switzerland are estimated at more than 1.5 billion francs or 1.37 billion euros (as of March 2013).

United States

In the United States, the Roman Catholic Church owned over 1,100,000 acres of farmland in the early 1970s. In the wake of the abuse scandals , the following dioceses filed for bankruptcy: the Diocese of Davenport in Iowa, the Diocese of Fairbanks in Alaska, the Archdiocese of Portland , the Diocese of San Diego in California, the Diocese of Spokane in Washington, the Diocese of Tucson in Arizona, the Diocese of Wilmington in Delaware and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee . This enabled the dioceses to avert claims from plaintiffs.

See also

media

Monographs
Contributions
  • Paolo Ojetti: Vaticano SpA In: L'Europeo , 7 January 1977
  • Peter Wensierski : Church. Discreet like Swiss banks. In: Der Spiegel , December 3, 2001 ( online )
  • Britta Scholtys: The Vatican and its finances. You do not talk about money. In: tagesschau.de , August 26, 2007 ( online )
  • Micaela Taroni: The Vatican is relying more and more on real estate. In: Wirtschaftsblatt , August 30, 2007 ( online ( Memento from May 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ))
  • Luisa Brandl: Church and Money: The Vatican's Thriving Finances. In: Stern , September 6, 2007 ( online )
  • Michael Kröger: Catholic Church. The clergy's secret billion-dollar treasure. In: Der Spiegel , April 6, 2010 ( online )
  • Michael Schmidt-Salomon : Good resolutions for the Pope's visit: leaving the church is not enough! 2004 ( online )
  • Churches: Expensive alimentation. In: Der Spiegel , November 8, 2010 ( online )
Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Britta Scholtys, 2007
  2. ↑ Horst Herrmann, 1990, p. 153
  3. ↑ Klaus Martens: How rich is the church? Four billion believers a year. In: The time . August 1, 1969. Retrieved May 17, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Luisa Brandl, 2007
  5. ↑ Peter Wensierski , 2001
  6. ↑ Michael Kröger: Catholic Church: The secret billion-dollar treasure of the clergy. In: Spiegel Online . April 6, 2010, accessed May 17, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Carsten Frerk 2002, p. 34
  8. ↑ mli / dpa: Catholic Church owns billions. In: n-tv . January 4, 2015, accessed January 4, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Marianna Deinyan: This is how prosperous the church is: The earthly billion kingdom of men of God . In: Focus Online , October 17, 2013.
  10. ↑ Weltbild-Verlag: Just get out quickly . In: Zeit Online , January 17, 2014.
  11. ↑ https://www.derwesten.de/staedte/nachrichten-aus-soest-lippstadt-moehnesee-und-ruethen/44-millionen-euro-ueberschuss-2015-im-erzbistum-paderborn-id12305962.html
  12. ↑ http://www.handelsblatt.com/panorama/aus-aller-welt/reichen-kirche-erzbistum-paderborn-vergroessert-millionenvermoegen/14736758.html
  13. ↑ Financial report: Assets of the Archdiocese of Cologne grow to 3.5 billion euros. In: Spiegel Online . October 6, 2016, accessed June 10, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Stefan Kaiser: Empire, even richer - Paderborn . In: Spiegel Online , September 29, 2015.
  15. ↑ Six billion euros in assets - that's how rich the Archdiocese of Munich is. sueddeutsche.de, June 21, 2018, accessed June 26, 2018 .
  16. ^ "Incidentally, the LRH reminds of the state's obligation, which has existed since 1919, to redeem state benefits. The constitutional mandate to the federal government to issue the necessary principles has not been fulfilled even 60 years after the Basic Law came into force. " Schleswig-Holstein State Audit Office , Results Report 2011, Chapter 7 ( online ; PDF; 43 kB)
  17. ↑ http://www.srf.ch/news/wirtschaft/katholische-kirche-in-der-schweiz-ein-millionen-unternehmen
  18. ^ Karlheinz Deschner, page 429
  19. ↑ Hannes Stein: Oath of Revelation of American Catholics. In: Die Welt , October 31, 2009 ( online ).
  20. ^ Spiegel Online: US archdiocese is bankrupt. January 5, 2010 ( online )