VATICAN CITY
Newsday
NICOLE WINFIELD (Associated Press)
VATICAN CITY – (AP) — The Vatican posted a 2.2 million euro ($2.85 million) budget surplus for 2012, an improvement from the previous year and some good news as it struggles to cope with a scandal involving its embattled bank.
In its annual financial statement Thursday, the Holy See said better management had helped it recover from one of its worst deficits a year earlier, when it booked a 14.9 million euro shortfall.
A 12 percent drop in donations from ordinary faithful, a 5 percent drop in offerings from religious orders and 5 million euros in new property taxes in 2012 prevented an even better result. Most of its expenses were for its 2,823 staff and the steep costs of running the Holy See’s global radio programming.
The Vatican City State, which runs the profit-making Vatican Museums, post office and supermarket, has a separate budget. Its profits were 23.08 million euros, up from 21.8 million euros in 2011. Fifty more people came to work in this branch of the Vatican in 2012, bringing its staffing up to 1,936.
The annual report, which was approved by a group of cardinals on Wednesday, followed one of the most convulsive weeks in the Vatican’s recent financial history: Last week, Pope Francis created a commission of inquiry into the Vatican bank, long the source of scandal for the Holy See. Two days later, a Vatican accountant was arrested in an elaborate 20 million euro smuggling plot. And on Monday, the Vatican bank’s two top managers resigned, apparently because they weren’t embracing the Holy See’s new push for financial transparency sufficiently.
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