Pope Leo XIV looks at a pallium as he marked June 29 a special feast day as the Vatican launched a fundraising campaign to help erase the Holy See’s $57-68 million budget deficit. (Photo from the Associated Press)
VATICAN CITY, Rome — Following the celebration of a special feast day last Sunday that is traditionally used by the Roman Catholic Church to drum up donations from the faithful, the Vatican under the first American pope has rolled out a new campaign to urge ordinary Catholics to make contributions for financial support and as a sign of union with the young pontificate of Pope Leo XIV.
In churches around the world, Masses were celebrated on the June 29 feast day with a special collection for Peter’s Pence that underwrites the operations of the central government of the Catholic Church and pays for the pope’s personal acts of charity.
Utilizing a promotional video, poster, QR code and website soliciting donations via credit card, PayPal, bank transfer and post office transfer, the Vatican is betting this year that an American-style fundraising pitch under the Chicago-born Leo will do more to help keep the Holy See bureaucracy afloat and erase its nearly 60-million euro structural deficit, an amount equal to about US$58 million to US$70 million.
The promotional campaign features Leo’s emotional first moments as pope, when he stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica and later choked up as he received the fisherman’s ring of the papacy. With an evocative soundtrack in the background, the video superimposes a message, available in several languages, urging donations via the Peter’s Pence collection.
“With your donation to Peter’s Pence, you support the steps of the Holy Father. Help him proclaim the Gospel to the world and extend a hand to our brothers and sisters in need. Support the steps of Pope Leo XIV. Donate to Peter’s Pence,” the video appealed to the Catholic faithful.
The Vatican highlighted that the Peter’s Pence fund is “a sign of communion with the pope and participation with his Apostolic Ministry.”
In reaction, the Pope expressed gratitude to those who gave their much needed donations: “From the heart, I thank those who with their gifts are supporting my first steps as the successor of Saint Peter.”
In recent year, the fund has been the source of scandal in recent years, amid revelations that the Vatican’s secretariat of state mismanaged its holdings through bad investments, incompetent management and waste. The recent trial over the Vatican’s bungled investment in a London property confirmed that the vast majority of Peter’s Pence contributions had funded the Holy See’s budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe.
Between the revelations and the Covid-19 pandemic, which closed churches and canceled the traditional pass-the-basket collection June 29, Peter’s Pence donations fell to US$51 million in 2022—a low not seen since 1986—that was nevertheless offset the same year by other investment income and revenue to the fund.
According to the Peter’s Pence annual report issued last week, donations rose to about US$56.7 million in 2023 and this hit to about US$63.6 million in the following year. However, the fund incurred huge expenses in the same year that reached US$88.3 million which continued as it covered the Holy See’s budgetary shortfalls.
On top of the budget deficit, the Vatican also is facing a shortfall of some US$1.17 billion in its pension fund that Pope Francis, in the months before he died, warned was insufficient to fulfill its obligations in the medium term.