THE WORLD’S RICHEST CHURCHES by Leke Beecroft

Edited by Leke Beecroft

#1. THE HOLY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

 

There is an old saying; the Jews own the world, but the Catholics run the world. In this article , we researched on the wealthiest church institutions on the earth. Due to the non-disclosure policy of many religious institutions, the research was carried out by searching out facts or statements either made in speeches by members of the Catholic Church or financial publications giving their assessments of the wealth of the Catholic Church.

In the Book- THE VATICAN BILLIONS by Avro Manhattan, published about 2 decades ago-the figures are even more startling today.
"The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines, T.W.A., etc. At a conservative estimate, these amount to more than 500 million dollars in the U.S.A. alone.
"In a statement published in connection with a bond prospectus, the Boston archdiocese listed its assets at Six Hundred and Thirty-five Million ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This leaves a net worth of Five Hundred and Seventy-one million dollars ($571,704,953). It is not difficult to discover the truly astonishing wealth of the church, once we add the riches of the twenty-eight archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the U.S.A., some of which are even wealthier than that of Boston.
"Some idea of the real estate and other forms of wealth controlled by the Catholic church may be gathered by the remark of a member of the New York Catholic Conference, namely 'that his church probably ranks second only to the United States Government in total annual purchase.' Another statement, made by a nationally syndicated Catholic priest, perhaps is even more telling. 'The Catholic church,' he said, 'must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States Government.'
"The Catholic church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. The Vatican, independently of each successive pope, has been increasingly orientated towards the U.S. The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican's financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time.
"The Vatican's treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.
"The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars."

*The Catholic Church is a functioning organization that needs money to operate. She has properties, artifacts, priceless art, etc. that all come together as part of the net worth. No one knows for sure how much that is…not even the Church itself.
*The Catholic Church in America alone educates 2.6 million students everyday, at cost to the Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars.
*The Catholic Church thas 230 colleges and universities in the United States with an enrollment of 700,000 students.
*The Catholic Church has a 637 non-profit making hospitals in the USA.
The Catholic Church clothes and feeds and houses 1 of 5 indigents in the United States, and no one asks them if they are a Catholic, a Protestant or a Jew; just "come, be fed, here's a sweater for you and a place to sleep at night" at a cost to the Church of 2.3 billion dollars a year.
The Catholic Church today has 64 million members in the United States and is the largest non-governmental agency in the country. It has 20,000 churches in this country alone and 240,000 around the globe. Every year they raise approximately $10 billion to help support these agencies. However, the Catholic Churches in Europe are arguably the most elaborate and ostentatious houses of wealth. Many of them contain original art works by artists such as Michaelangelo and Carvaggio - works that would would be auctioned off for millions today - and statues made from gold or silver. Their wealth also includes immense lands and real estate investments.
Perhaps more saliently: how much money does the Catholic Church have? No one outside the Vatican really knows, precisely. But it almost certainly has wealth that would rival that of many national governments. Last year, The Economist calculated that the Catholic church in America alone had a $170 billion annual operating budget. Globally, the figure is much larger. When you add up the value of the church's worldwide holdings—land, buildings, and treasures—it's reasonable to imagine a huge, huge number.
The Economist's estimates found about $5 billion in annual charity spending out of that $170 billion total— slightly less than 3%. Thus, the American Catholic church spends about 3% of its budget on direct good works.
*In Germany, the budget of the Catholic Church is $243 million per year. The church-tax being collected for the Roman Catholic Church alone for the year 2004 was 4.158 billion Euros that was used for the payment of the priests and other people working for the church, the renovation of churches and other buildings and 10% for the support of caritative projects.
Two-hundred-year-old religious levies
Germany is the world's fourth-richest country, and citizens registered as Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish pay a tax to their religious institutions: between 8 and 9 percent of their income, depending on the region. With Catholics accounting for 31 percent of the country's population, the church claims about 25 million tax-paying adherents, who further contributed $6.5 billion in 2011. A priest from Mannheim, a city in southwestern Germany, told the BBC why the tax, instituted in 1803 to compensate the church after some of its properties were nationalized, remained important: "With kindergarten, with homes for elderly or unemployed, we've got really good things so I know we need the tax to help the German country to do good things."
*This is the budget alone for the Roman Catholic Church in Germany (where about 40 million roman catholics reside). The number of Roman Catholics world wide is about 1.2 billion people.
*The mission of the Catholic Church is to proclaim and establish the Kingdom of God begun by Jesus Christ among all peoples. The Church endeavors to save souls.
*Keeping the priceless art available at the Vatican in trust for all mankind to come, see, and inspire belief in the Kingdom of God is part of this mission.
*The Catholic Charities worldwide distribute billions of dollars in goods and services each year to the needy and have been doing so for well over a thousand years.
*The Vatican has the ultimate responsibility for the lifelong support of over 400,000 priests, over 54,000 religious brothers, and over 760,000 religious sisters worldwide.
*TIME Magazines best guesses about the Vatican's wealth put it at $10 billion to $15 billion. Of this wealth, Italian stockholdings alone run to $1.6 billion.

The Roman Catholic Church’s explosive growth across Africa has led to serious talk of the possibility of an African cardinal succeeding Pope in the near future and clerics from Nigeria, Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has the continent’s largest Catholic population, have been mentioned as top contenders.
With 16 percent of the world’s Catholics now living in Africa, the church’s future, many say, is in Africa. The Catholic population in Africa grew nearly 21 percent between 2005 and 2010, far outstripping other parts of the world. While the number of priests in North America and Europe declined during the same period, in Africa they grew by 16 percent. The seminaries, clerical officials here say, are bursting with candidates, and African priests are being sent to take over churches in former colonial powers.
From a population of 2 million in 1900 to 140 million by year 2000, Africa is the new bastion of Catholicism. By 2025, some 230 million Africans or one-sixth of the world's Catholics are expected to be Africans.
The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace (Basilique Notre-Dame de la Paix) was constructed between 1985 and 1989 with different cost estimates given by various groups. Some stated that it cost US$175 million, US$300 million,or US$400 million,ranging as high as US$600 million. Whichever is true, it stands presently as the most expensive church ever built in Africa which has the largest church auditoria in the world.
It would seem like a simple task to add up the wealth of the Catholic Church, but it's actually a lot more complex. For one thing, from a property owning standpoint, there isn't one organization. While the Pope is the head of the Church, he actually only personally controls the assets of the Holy See (the Vatican) and the Diocese of Rome. Individual dioceses (e.g. Archdiocese of New York, etc.) own their own property as do individual religious orders (e.g.. Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, etc.).
With an organization that not only has 1.2 billion+ members, but also runs the largest network of charitable organizations, including hospitals and clinics and schools throughout the world, there are going to be lots of hard assets (buildings and land) and liquid assets (cash). The Vatican also holds priceless art and artifacts in its museums as do Catholic organizations throughout the world, but these are priceless so their actually worth is not known.
As for the Holy See itself, they release an annual report of their finances, which are becoming more transparent under new rules established by Pope Francis. We don't know precisely what the net assets are but they are likely to be in the multiple billions of euros and their single biggest expense is salaries of all the workers.