Council for the Economy discusses 2021 Vatican budget

By Hannah Brockhaus for CNA

February 17, 2021 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Credit: Bohumil Petrik/CNA.

Vatican City, Feb 17, 2021 / 08:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s Council for the Economy met on Tuesday to discuss the details of the annual budget for 2021.

The Feb. 16 meeting took place online, with cardinals and lay council members connecting from the Vatican and other countries around the world.

According to a press release, the virtual assembly focused on the Holy See’s annual budget for the current year, presented by Spanish layman Maximino Caballero Ledo, who was appointed to the number two position in the Secretariat for the Economy in August.

The Vatican’s budget, which already operated on a deficit, took another hit in 2020 and the beginning of 2021, when the Vatican Museums, a major source of income, was forced to close for more than 24 weeks.

For the Holy See, the coronavirus crisis also meant collapsing market investments, uncertain income from real estate investments, and diminished contributions from the Church around the world.

Caballero’s presentation was followed by information from the audit committee. Emilio Ferrara, secretary-general of the Secretariat for the Economy, also spoke about principles for application of two points in Pope Francis’ law reorganizing Vatican finances, issued at the end of 2020.

In the document, the pope formalized the transfer of financial responsibilities from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which functions as the Holy See’s treasury and sovereign wealth manager.

Particular attention was given “to the approval of budgets and financial statements and the appointment of official auditors,” the press release said.

The meeting closed with a discussion of the statutes of the audit committee. The Council for the Economy plans to next meet in April.

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Now a cardinal, Giovanni Angelo Becciu heads to congregation for saints’ causes

June 28, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Jun 28, 2018 / 11:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Newly-minted Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu will resign from his post as substitute of the Secretariat of State tomorrow, in anticipation of his appointment as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints later this summer.

Cardinal Becciu, 70, was elevated to the cardinalate June 28, and will resign his role at the Secretariat of State June 29. His appointment at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints will take effect Aug. 31.

Referring to his new post while speaking to the press June 27, Cardinal Becciu said the Church does not exist “to create a system of power to dominate,” but its primary goal is to help humanity to “experience God’s existence.”

The experience with God, he said, is “an experience which transforms, which day by day you make a good journey, and at the end you become a saint.”

The Church’s mission, then, is to remind the world of “the vocation for all men to become saints.”

Because of this, Becciu said, the importance of his new office is to “discover those people who lived the Gospel in such a courageous way, and to propose them to humanity as true models of holiness. It’s a very interesting challenge.”

Becciu was born in 1948 in Pattada, on the island of Sardinia, and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Ozieri in 1972, at the age of 24.

In 2001 he was consecrated a bishop, and appointed apostolic nuncio to Angola as well as Sao Tome and Principe. He served there until 2009, when he was appointed apostolic nuncio to Cuba.

Since 2011, he has been substitute at the Secretarat of State.

Cardinal Becciu has served as an important aide to Pope Francis, and while meeting with reporters he discussed the pope’s ongoing reform of the Roman Curia.

“It’s still too early to judge the reform,” he said: “The work hasn’t been finished” and it is still “a bit rugged”.

“We’re working toward an apostolic constitution that will bring everything together, giving a unified structure to the whole reform. So far we’ve had elements, but not a unified idea.”

Cardinal Becciu’s role at the Secretariat of State “all at the service of the Holy Father. It meant heping to spread his voice and helping him to carry out his mission throughout the world.”

The cardinal has also served as Pope Francis’ personal delegate to the Knights of Malta, tasked with overseeing a “spiritual and moral” reform of the order.

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