Holy See Committed to Financial Transparency: Card. Bertone

December 18, 2012: The necessary transparency of economic and financial activities of the Holy See and the State of Vatican City requires a commitment ever more significant by individual governments in the management of the assets and businesses with timely request the necessary authorizations and faithful transmission of accounting data to a higher level. This has become even more necessary in the face of the Holy See's commitment to comply with international standards of financial control that gradually being fulfilled, as has been publicly recognized at European level, said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican’s Secretary of State, on Tuesday at the meeting for the presentation of the new Regulation of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See. Present at the meeting were the Superiors and officials of the Office of the Roman Curia, representatives of the various administrations of the Holy See and the State of Vatican City.
Appreciating their dedicated service to the Church and the Pope, he said that the ‘the aims and work of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See and be seen framed in the broader context of the function that temporal goods have in the mission of the Church. The Church over the centuries has consistently claimed their freedom and autonomy, in order to achieve its institutional goals.
Cardinal Bertone expressed his fervent hope that the meeting would be a valuable opportunity to put further emphasis on the essential role that institutional Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See plays in close harmony with the Supreme Authority, represented by the Secretary of State. He hoped that the study and comparison favors a practical and effective cooperation between the prefecture and the government covered, to locate in an atmosphere of cordiality, dialogue and mutual trust those measures of renewal and reform And all may grow in awareness of the need to support not only the mission of the Church and the Holy See, but also its credibility.
The current Code of Canon Law, reaffirms the authority of the Catholic Church to acquire, retain, administer and alienate temporal goods. The validity of this principle is also in keeping with the modern concept of sovereignty, the rule of law, which allows for the constitutional protection of the economic rights of social formations that act as intermediate jurisdictions within the state itself.
The Church, however, is always concerned to consider the mere instrumentality of temporal goods in relation to the performance of their duties, specifying the institutional purposes that make lawful the acquisition, possession, sale and administration of temporal goods, namely divine worship, the works of the apostolate and of charity, the honest support of the clergy and other ministers.
It 'should be noted that the Church, as such, has no assets: it possesses them through institutions that compose it, i.e. legal persons.
Within the Roman Curia there is an office of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, which, among others, also has the function of economics against all the authorities of the Holy See and the State of Vatican City, whatever the autonomy they enjoy. This body was built by Pope Paul VI in the plan of reform of the Roman Curia with the task of knowledge, control, supervision and coordination of "all the investments and operations of the Holy See's most important economic ... so that each business to develop in an orderly way its purpose."
The need to have a knowledge and control of all economic activities linked to the heritage of the Holy See and its management had been heard in the Second Vatican Council and was then increased with the emergence of growing deficits in Vatican budgets.