Pope Leo Inherits Cleaned Up Vatican Bank That's Making Money
(Bloomberg) -- From offices just off St. Peter's Square in the Vatican, Jean-Baptiste Douville de Franssu, a former executive at the money-management firm Invesco Ltd., and Gian Franco Mammì watch over €5.7 billion ($6.5 billion) at one of the world's most-exclusive banks.
It's a pittance compared with the trillions shuffled around by the Goliaths in London or New York. But the stockpile of assets and portfolio investments is serving the higher purpose of putting a small dent in the financial strains that have squeezed the Catholic Church for years.
The Institute for Works of Religion, or the Vatican Bank as it's known, provides traditional banking services and oversees investments for institutions tied to the church. Last year, it continued to draw in new cash, increasing its assets under management to a 10-year high, and is seeking to build on the record by showing it can continue to beat its benchmarks even by sticking to investments in line with the ethics of the faith.
'Financial markets have no mercy,' de Franssu, the IOR's president, said in an interview. 'If IOR doesn't deliver what it is expected from IOR, we will be in serious trouble.'
The bank's profits rose about 7% to €32.8 million in 2024, according to figures released Wednesday. Those earnings, which are used to pay dividends to the church, won't make up for the hole left in the Vatican's budget due to declining worldwide donations, administrative costs and retirement bills.
But it indicates the bank is making some strides toward shedding the reputation for mismanagement and secrecy that resulted in several public scandals surrounding investment losses, criminal probes and clandestine love affairs. De Franssu and Mammì — a more than three-decade employee who has been director general since 2015 — said Pope Leo XIV has indicated that he intends to continue the process started by Pope Francis to clean up the institution that effectively serves as the family office for the world's largest faith.
De Franssu was brought in in 2014 after three decades of scandals, from the Banco Ambrosiano failure in the 1980s to the freezing of €23m by Italian prosecutors in 2010, tarnished the IOR's image and prompted Francis, to make financial transparency a priority.
Since then, it has it began publishing annual reports and revamped its management structure, ceding more oversight to lay people like de Franssu. It also adopted regulations aimed at bringing the bank into compliance with international financial standards, which led to the closure of thousands of accounts.
The IOR has also hired from investment banks including Citigroup Inc. and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA. Over the past three and five years, 10 of its 13 flagship investment funds outranked a majority of their peers, according to the report released Wednesday, and its executives are hopeful that the first American pope will encourage more US institutions affiliated with the church to shift their money to Rome.
'We have shown you can beat benchmarks with purely ethical investments,' Mammì said in the interview. 'If you want to speculate — if you want to reach that additional 2% in return — I suggest you go elsewhere.'
While The IOR is not part of the Holy See's core annual budget, it is one of the key institutions in the financial management of the Vatican. It shares responsibility with the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See for the management of the Holy See's real estate and movable assets.
For 2024, the IOR board proposed a €13.8 million dividend to the Commission of Cardinals, which uses it to pay for activities linked to religion and charity or as a contribution to the Holy See's coffers.
In the last few years the dividends have been lower than they were before 2014, which Mammì said reflects the bank's efforts to better control its finances. While the Holy See as a whole hasn't published a full budget report since 2022, the last set of accounts for year 2024 included a deficit of about €70 ($79.8m) deficit, according to Italian daily Repubblica.
'Our job as managers is to invest, make a profit, hand out a dividend,' Mammì said. 'It is up to the Cardinals to decide how to re-direct the money.'
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