Read By: Jason Berry

The Sunday collection in every Catholic church throughout the world is as
familiar a part of the Mass as the homily and even Communion. There is no
doubt that historically the Catholic Church has been one of the great
engines of charity in history. But once a dollar is dropped in that basket,
where does it go? How are weekly cash contributions that can amount to tens
of thousands of dollars accounted for? Where does the money go when
a diocese sells a church property for tens of millions of dollars? And what
happens when hundreds of millions of dollars are turned over to officials
at the highest ranks, no questions asked, for their discretionary use?
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest organization in the world.
The Vatican has never revealed its net worth, but the value of its works
of art, great churches, property in Rome, and stocks held through its bank
easily run into the tens of billions. Yet the Holy See as a sovereign state
covers a mere 108 acres and has a small annual budget of about 0 million.

No major book has examined the church.s financial underpinnings and practices
with such journalistic force. Today the church bears scrutiny by virtue of the
vast amounts of money (nearly billion in the United States alone) paid out
to victims of clergy abuse. Amid mounting diocesan bankruptcies, bishops have
been selling off whole pieces of the infrastructure.-churches, schools,
commercial properties.while the nephew of one of the Vatican.s most powerful
cardinals engaged in a lucrative scheme to profiteer off the enormous
downsizing of American church wealth.

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