Vatican credits safe investments for surplus

[emad]

The Associated Press/VATICAN CITY
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
Associated Press Writer

JUL. 11 9:00 A.M. ET Vatican officials on Monday credited a policy of low-yield but safe investments and the stabilization of the dollar in helping it post its first surplus in four years.

Cardinal Sergio Sebastiani said "the good news for the current operating statements is that, after three years of negative results, the year 2004 closed in the black."

The Vatican said in a brief statement Saturday that it had netted euro3.08 million (US$3.67 million) in 2004 even though church collections and donations by individuals were down 7.4 percent. Sebastiani, who heads the Vatican's office for economic affairs, gave no reason for the decline at a news conference Monday and did not say in which countries contributions fell.

He did report a gain of euro17.7 million (US$21.07 million) in the Vatican's investment sector, noting that world markets had generally improved and that the Vatican had had reduced losses from exchange rate fluctuations of the dollar against the euro, which is the Vatican's official currency although many investments and contributions are in dollars.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8B96QNG0.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down


GUESS the story that the Saudis bankrolled the Vatican's Enron/Worldcom portfolio losses may have some credence.....

[DanCa]

1. I ll give Catholic schools credit for something :D)

They make do with less and know how to stretch the value of a dollar.

[MichiganVote]

4. Good news: Public schools all over the nation do the same

[Chicago Democrat]

2. Tax them! They are partisan in US politics and I sick of it!

Grrr.

[dArKeR]

3. Pope Tells Journalists To Search For 'Truth'

Pope Tells Journalists To Search For 'Truth'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/23/AR2005042301372.html?nav=rss_world/europe

The Vatican has sought the intervention of the U.S. State Department to declare Pope Benedict XVI immune from a sexual abuse lawsuit filed here, according to court documents.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3201751

Vatican said Monday there was no investigation under way of allegations that the Mexican founder of a conservative religious order sexually abused seminarians
http://www.winktv.com/x466.xml?URL=http://localhost/APWIREFEED/d8a8vi600.xml

Vatican Reportedly Clears Priest
Vaca, a former priest, is one of at least eight men in Mexico and the United States who have accused the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado of molesting them when they were teenage seminary students in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200966.html?nav=rss_world/europe

Despite the horrific drumbeat of child molestation revelations, however, sensible Catholics hoping for a more transparent and less sexually repressed church shouldn't hold their breath. The new pope is not only a longtime leader of vicious church attacks on "evil" gays, he also has shamefully blamed the molestation scandal on the media.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/thenation/20050524/cm_thenation/20050606scheer0524_1

Vatican Accused of Child Molestation Cover-Up
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/098516.htm

Survivors Network says the overwhelming majority of its members have never sued and are too traumatized to do so. They say they adopted their tactics after bishops promised for years to take action against guilty clergy, then never did.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7463011/page/2

Pope's Nazi past
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7576505 /


Unedited pic of the pope.

[PurityOfEssence]

5. Fleecing the poor is an artform

Congrats to the Roman Empire for effectively sucking the blood of the unfortunate.

[Canuckistanian]

6. Whew! I can sleep now.

Knowing the church is profitable again, especially in these times of global poverty.

[Divernan]

7. Vatican cut off retirement funds to American clergy

\Last weekend I went to a very funny play called Late Night Catechism, originally produced in San Francisco. It is a one woman show, wherein the actress plays an older nun, in full old-fashioned nun garb. You know how at the end of a lot of Actors Equity productions, the actors will collect for AIDS research in the theater lobbies? Well at the end of this show, "Sister" explained that when the US initiated Social Security, the Vatican cut off all moneys for the support of retired clergy.
Now granted, the govt. may have withheld FICA from the nuns' salaries, but those salaries were pitifully low, so the eventual social security benefits would be extremely small also. And most nuns worked well into their 70's and even 80's before retiring.

Maybe church collections and donations were "down 7.4%" but I know that the Church in Rome has vast wealth which it notoriously does not tap into to relieve human suffering. Granted the US dioceses may be hurting from settlements and judgements to the victims of some of its priests, but the plaintiffs can't touch the spoils and riches accumulated by Rome over the centuries.

[emad]

8. Lawsuit accuses Vatican Bank of role in World War II crimes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1915544