VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service
Vatican City, 1 October 2013 (VIS) – The Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) today published its annual report for 2012 on its website, www.ior.va. It is the first report to be made public. The document, over a hundred pages long, reveals that in 2012 the IOR recorded a net profit of 86.6 million euros, a figure which enabled the Institute to make a contribution of 54.7 million euros to the budget of the Holy See. The report in itself is not a novelty, but rather the fact of its publication is; this constitutes a response to the demand for greater transparency in the Institute’s activities, according to the president of the IOR, Ernst Von Freyberg, in an interview published today by Vatican Radio.
Von Freyberg explains that it is the first annual report published in the 125-year history of the IOR, and contains a description of its work, a summary of 2013 and the first eight months of 2013, statements from the supervisory board, from the commission of cardinals and from the prelate, and over sixty pages of detailed financial statements with a full audit statement from KPMG. “You do not have to be an accountant to understand these pages; if you read the introductory letter and the description of our business of 2012 and 2013 you will get a good idea of what the Institute for Religious Works is about’”.
With regard to the question of external auditing, included in the process of preparing the document, Von Freyberg reiterates that the IOR accounts have been audited for a long time by reputable international accounting firms, such as KPMG in 2013, and insists that this is not unusual; the novelty resides in the publication of the report. “The most surprising thing is how unsurprising it is. You see a rather conservatively managed financial institution safeguarding assets, investing in very conservative investments like government bonds and bank deposits. And you will see a highly capitalised institution. At the end of last year our equity ratio was 15% which is way above what comparable financial institutions would have”.
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