Italian Government To Impose Tax On Vatican Real Estate

[Lin ASL Ebron]

I may be late to the party on this one, did anyone else this is? This is from February 2012. I heard a talk by one of the brothers from Brooklyn Bethel a few weeks after the attacks on 9/11/2001, and he alluded to the governments going after religious property due to economic crisis.

The sands are slowly shifting under the great Harlot.

Take care,

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Italy plans to tax Vatican on commercial properties

Italy's Catholic Church faces an annual multi-million euro bill over government plans to strip it of its tax-exempt status.

Prime Minister Mario Monti has announced the Vatican must pay taxes on non-religious property, from which it previously enjoyed an exemption.

The annual cost could be up to 720m euros ($945m; £598m) according to municipal government bodies.

Italy's Catholic Church has 110,000 properties, worth about 9bn euros. It includes shopping centres and a range of residential property.

In December, the government reintroduced a tax paid by anyone who owns land or property in Italy - which the Church does not pay.

But a growing wave of Italians are opposed to what they see as special privileges in the face of a tightening economy. Following their government's latest austerity measure package, more than 130,000 people signed an online petition calling for the Church's tax exempt status to be revoked.

Since 2005, church-run groups and organisations have not been classed as official commercial bodies and have been exempt from paying property tax.

According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, tax authorities will calculate how much of a property is used purely for religious purposes and tax it proportionately. This means a church would remain exempt but a chapel which operates an hostel would pay tax accordingly.

Article Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17072211

[Hallett 82]

Our CO visit this week had a talk about Christendom and compared to our ministry.

One highlight was that the Vatican has untold treasures worth many millions of dollars . .tapestries, art etc.

CO mentioned that the Italian government had approached the Vatican to ask if there might be some help for the poor forthcoming in these tough times and they got the answer . . No.

[janthonyg]

The actual wealth is staggering.

The Sistine Chapel alone has an estimated value in the trillion-dollar range. However, the Vatican says that it is actually priceless, and thus, it is valued by the church at one euro for accounting purposes.

And they do this with many of their assets.

Here is a quote from a book entitled the Vatican Billions:

In a statement published in connection with a bond prospectus, the Boston archdiocese listed its assets at Six Hundred and Thirty-five Million ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This leaves a net worth of Five Hundred and Seventy-one million dollars ($571,704,953). It is not difficult to discover the truly astonishing wealth of the church, once we add the riches of the twenty-eight archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the U.S.A., some of which are even wealthier than that of Boston."

Yikes. I just did some basic calculations. The 28 archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the USA alone are worth tens of trillions!!!

Now let's add in the rest of the globe and the Vatican assets.