Quote:
Originally Posted by dth123451
Try again
Strange reply, because both tourism and rents/real estate investment are obviously major sources of income for the Catholic Church. What are its most important sources of income? Publishing and merchandising?
Some will claim donations as the principal source, but as it is difficult to imagine a better vehicle for massive money laundering, such claims have to viewed with at least a bit of skepticism. Such a claim seems plausible for dioceses in the US, in particular, but the US is a special case in many ways.
In a lot of Europe (e.g. Italy, Spain, Germany) the state directly gives money to the Catholic Church (one checks a box on one's tax return and some euros go the Church).
To the extent that they are even available, what pass for the official figures for the Holy See's income and budget and the Vatican city's income and budget obviously don't include most of what most of us mean by the Catholic Church (they are far too small compared to the size of the institution and correspond just to the personnel and expenses of those two institutions as such). The Archdiocese of Chicago has more money than the Vatican, but when I say "Church" I mean the whole big monster, not the formal legal entities that constitute it. But I'm not sure what to say if you think the fees charged to tourists to view the Cathedrals in Barcelona aren't important parts of the financing of the Catholic Church in Catalunya.
In many locales the Catholic Church has a serious interest in maintaining in secrecy its income sources and assets because it is exposed to multibillion dollar&euro judgments for its organized protection of criminal behavior. In other cases, e.g. in Spain, it simply appropriated a lot of lands during a dictatorship. The dispute over the owernship (public or church) of the Mezquita in Cordoba is a typical example.