As part of to reformation of the Vatican’s investment practices, it is announced that the Vatican is banning its investments in firms whose activities are contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. The Tuesday announcement mentioned pornography and prostitution, gambling, the arms industry, abortion services, and contraception.
All organizations that are part of the Holy See or the Vatican City State are now required to opt for low-risk investments guided by ethical, social, and environmental criteria.
With a document published this week that takes effect September 1, the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, headed by Spanish Jesuit Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, the Vatican’s various investments will now be consolidated in the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).
The document states that money should serve to “contribute to a more just and sustainable world,” always bearing in mind that it should preserve “the real value of the net worth of the Holy See and generate a sufficient return to contribute in a sustainable way to the financing of its activities.”
Investments must also “be aligned” with the teachings of the Catholic Church, thus excluding investments that “contradict fundamental principles, such as the sanctity of life or the dignity of the human being or the common good.”
Come September, all investments will go through an account in the so-called Vatican Bank (technically, the Institute for the Works of Religion or IOR) controlled by APSA.
“Investing in one place and not in another, in one productive sector and not in another, is always a moral and cultural choice,” says the document.
In the past, through an investment fund partially financed by the Secretariat of State, the Vatican reportedly had poured millions into companies that produced goods that clash with the Catholic Church’s teaching, including in a pharmaceutical company that produced the morning-after pill, the porn industry, and even in the production of the movie “Rocketman,” a biopic of singer Elton John.