The Vatican has found itself in the middle of a critical financial crisis, which threatens to jeopardize the livelihood of retired clergy and staff worldwide
  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    541·
    2 days ago

    Except they have billions in stolen art and could liquidate it at any point. If not trillions, actually.

    Nobody knows exactly what Vatican has but Porphyry Basin in the Vatican Museum is estimated to be worth 2$ billion alone (it was commissioned by Emperor Nero).

    Vatican could literally end the world hunger with their treasure hoard.

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 day ago

      Their art collection is so massive, containing such crazy rare items, many cannot have a price tag as they are literally priceless. It’s impossible to calculate its value due to the extreme rarity, or because anything like it to compare it’s value to is also in the Vatican collection.

      When they sell 1 priceless art item, they can sustain themselves for a year. They have hundreds of thousands of those items, if not millions.

      Saying the Vatican goes bankrupt sounds like “Elon Musk struggles to pay for his groceries”.

      Sounds to me their massive stream of money is declining and they want to scare people into giving them more money.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
        1·
        17 hours ago

        Though if the idea that high value art is actually a money laundering/moving scheme is true, this might not be the case. The idea is that no one or few people actually want to spend millions on art but pretend they do as a front to spend millions on something else.

        They could probably save some money by reducing the “cover up pedophile priests” item in their budget.

        • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
          2·
          12 hours ago

          The collection of the Vatican doesn’t consist of weird modern art paintings but of historical important pieces. Private art collections of Roman emperors, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rodin, etc. Not some fake money laundering value because some Chinese tech CEO spent way too much money on it but true historic value backed by scientific research and historic manuscripts, which hold value on their own. Any museum would sell children’s organs to be able to get their hands on a single piece. I’ve been to the Vatican myself, I’ve seen one single wing of many, completely filled with the most impressive art pieces, stacked together like they don’t have enough room to store everything properly. The British museum is innocent compared to the amount of stolen priceless art pieces the Vatican has.

          And they they are on the brink of bankruptcy, because “people aren’t giving them enough money anymore”… “Because of the current pope”. I guess for the first time we have a pope doing something right.

          A corporation which thrives on one source of income alone: gifts. And now the infinite money stream is declining. What was it, Christians say when bad shit happens… Ah yes, I remember, “God works in mysterious ways”. Or translated for people who do not believe in imaginary friends and fairytales: shut up and deal with it.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
      154·
      2 days ago

      Vatican could literally end the world hunger with their treasure hoard.

      No they couldn’t. They’d end up making a bunch of warlords into billionaires while the regular people would go on starving. The only way to end world hunger is grassroots economic development and education (especially for women). You can’t do that by dumping billions of dollars into those countries. The problem is very tricky and the work is long and arduous.

  • Sixty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    142·
    2 days ago

    Can all the nations they stole artifacts and trinkets from get them back when they declare bankruptcy? /s

  • nucleative@lemmy.worldEnglish
    54·
    2 days ago

    Just pray. If your God is the creator of the universe, it’s pretty likely he can handle the situation once you let him know.

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
    13·
    2 days ago

    I am an agnostic so my opinion might not be worth anything to Christians (or Catholics specifically), but I don’t really see the point in organized church structures. If you believe in God, support his ideals, why do you need to go to church anyway, or at least why would you want your local church support some big hierarchy (often with controversial opinions or actions) for your money?

    • bluewing@lemm.ee
      9·
      2 days ago

      Same reason people go to comicons or music concerts or protests. People just want to be with others who believe in and like the same things as they do. It’s a pretty simple and basic human behavior.

    • Kiwi_fella@lemmy.world
      6·
      2 days ago

      It’s been a long while since I was involved in a church, but my recollection of the Bible isn’t able to reference anything that implies there is a need for the hierarchy associated with the Catholic Church, or similar. It kind of says you can have a personal relationship with God, and I don’t recall anything about Mary being special in any way aside from giving birth to the so called Messiah.

    • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      1 day ago

      Because part of the rules of any cult is to isolate yourself with other cult members. Christianity is no different.