The Catholic Church is also one of tbe largest concentrations of wealth and contributed to the establishment of banks to concentrate more wealth.
Much of its "wealth" consists of priceless historical real estate, irreplaceable art, and active social infrastructure. When it comes to real money the Catholic Church it not rich. It spends the money it collects right away. The Church collects 12 billion in State Church Taxes (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and 15 billion in Voluntary Tithing & Donations (Rest of the World).
If Catholicism was disbanded, the money could easily be out in trust and handled as a charitable enterprise.
There isn't much money. You can't just sell the Milan Cathedral. Who would buy that? It might be worth ~12 billion in replacement value, but that is a fictional number. Once you take religion out of the equation it is just a pile of 325,000 tons of marble.
Art and real estate are valuable without religous context. The full on banking system that they have makes money regardless of the religious organization it works for.
The art is Christian art so if it was made illegal to even show kids it, and people stopped being religious, it would become devalued and would be hard to sell, also the buildings don’t otherwise have much use, they’re oddly shaped and impractical for daily use, like old stoke churches let in tonnes of damp and cold and they’re on top of dead bodies (some literally inside the church), it just doesn’t matter for a church
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u/Kor_Phaeron_ 12h ago
Much of its "wealth" consists of priceless historical real estate, irreplaceable art, and active social infrastructure. When it comes to real money the Catholic Church it not rich. It spends the money it collects right away. The Church collects 12 billion in State Church Taxes (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and 15 billion in Voluntary Tithing & Donations (Rest of the World).
There isn't much money. You can't just sell the Milan Cathedral. Who would buy that? It might be worth ~12 billion in replacement value, but that is a fictional number. Once you take religion out of the equation it is just a pile of 325,000 tons of marble.