Days before trip, Pope's envoy in Iraq tests positive for COVID
- Feb 28, 2021
The Vatican said Friday it expects a deficit of nearly 50 million euros ($60.7 million) this year because of pandemic-related losses, a figure that grows to 80 million euros ($97 million) when donations from the faithful are excluded.
With no international trips this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the prolonged immobility provided Pope Francis some much-needed time to focus on cleaning out his own backyard, perhaps most notably when it comes to money.
Does anyone seriously believe that the pope’s new corporate BFFs, with $10.5 trillion in assets at their disposal, couldn’t help cover a $60 million deficit in a pinch?
For the whole Catholic world, August 15 means the Feast of the Assumption. In Italy, it also means ferragosto, the traditional summer holiday that sees the whole country head to either the beach or the mountains, or both, roughly from the second week of August until early September.
The recent appointment of six women to the Vatican’s chief financial body has been praised as a significant stride in Pope Francis’s consistent insistence that more women are needed in leadership roles.
German Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s recent comments on priestly celibacy are merely the latest chapter of his role as a protagonist in the Francis papacy.