Is He Serious?

Pope Francis was installed today. I'm not Catholic but the installation of a Pope goes beyond the Catholic faith and qualifies as an international event. The list of world leaders who showed up for the installation is impressive. What's more impressive to me are the stories being told about the new Pope. Apparently he stated that he wants the church to be poor. I wonder if he's serious. Because that would take a lot of work. Liquidating the assets of the Catholic Church in order to address poverty and make a difference in the world would take decades. But I'm fully supportive of Pope Francis and encourage him to make the effort.

It's hard to put a number on the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church. Someone tried in response to a question on Yahoo Answers and this is what was listed as the best answer to the question:

"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."

Wow! If this answer is close to true then Pope Francis controls billions of dollars and claims he wants the church to be poor. Not that I think there will be any significant change in the church's financial position under the new Pope. But it's fun to think about what could happen. You can access the annual financial statement of the Holy See if you're interested in just the Vatican's annual finances (about $355 million in 2007).

Lest you think this is me bashing the Catholic Church for hoarding so much wealth, let me say that any Christian organization that's been accumulating wealth for any amount of time has resources it could be using better. The fact that the Roman Catholic Church has been accumulating for nearly 2000 years just means they have a head start on the rest of organized religion.

The bigger question must be..."Are we who call ourselves Christians leveraging our ability to accumulate wealth for the glory of God or the glory of ourselves?" Who is glorified by staggering bank accounts, stunning buildings and impressive weekly stage productions?

I'm not pointing fingers, just asking questions. Questions I hope Pope Francis will continue to ask from his place of influence in the world.