EWTN News reports that the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the so-called “Vatican bank,” closed 2025 with a net profit of 51 million euros, a 55.5% increase over the previous year. The article celebrates this as evidence of “sustained growth,” highlighting a Tier 1 capital ratio of 71.9%—described as “extraordinary solvency”—and a dividend of 24.3 million euros to “the Holy Father,” i.e., the antipope Leo XIV. The IOR claims its investments are “aligned with Catholic social teaching” and “compatible with the Catholic faith,” while serving 12,000 clients across 110 countries linked to the post-conciliar structures.
The Idol of Financial Success in Place of Spiritual Mission
The tone of the EWTN News report is not one of pastoral concern but of corporate triumphalism. Words like “profit,” “dividend,” “capital ratio,” and “portfolio management” dominate—language befitting a multinational conglomerate, not the mystical Body of Christ. This is not accidental. It reflects the complete inversion of values that defines the conciliar sect since its inception under John XXIII. Where the true Church measures success in souls saved, sacraments validly administered, and the glory of God, the neo-church measures itself by balance sheets and market performance.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), declared: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” He insisted that Christ’s kingship extends over all nations and institutions—including financial ones—and that “when God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The IOR’s boastful celebration of profit margins is a direct repudiation of this teaching. It places mammon—not Christ—at the center of the Church’s temporal activity.
A “Clean Audit” Cannot Sanctify Apostasy
The article proudly notes that Deloitte & Touche issued a “clean audit opinion.” But no amount of financial transparency can cleanse an institution that serves an illegitimate authority. The IOR operates under the auspices of the conciliar sect, whose “popes” are manifest heretics and apostates. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice (II, 30): “A manifest heretic… by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” Wernz and Vidal confirm: “By notorious and publicly manifested heresy, the Roman Pontiff… is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence by the Church.”
Since John XXIII convened Vatican II—a council condemned by the Syllabus of Errors (1864) for its embrace of religious liberty, ecumenism, and modernism—the occupants of the Vatican have been usurpers. Their financial apparatus, however solvent, is built on the ruins of the true Church. The IOR’s “mission to support religious and charitable works” is a smokescreen: it funds the global infrastructure of apostasy, from ecumenical dialogues with schismatics and pagans to the promotion of false mystics like Faustyna Kowalska and John Paul II.
“Catholic Social Teaching” as a Fig Leaf for Usury and Speculation
The claim that IOR investments are “aligned with Catholic social teaching” is blasphemous. Catholic social teaching, as defined by Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum and Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, condemns unbridled capitalism, the concentration of wealth, and the exploitation of labor. It upholds the universal destination of goods, the dignity of work, and the subordination of economic life to moral law. Yet the IOR engages in speculative portfolio management with 11 international asset managers—hardly the behavior of a charitable trust.
Moreover, the Church has always condemned usury—the charging of interest on loans—as a sin against justice. While modern canon law permits modest interest under strict conditions, the IOR’s entire model is predicated on net interest income of 32.3 million euros. This is not stewardship; it is participation in the global financial system that the Church Fathers and Doctors consistently denounced as incompatible with the Gospel.
The Dividend to the Antipope: Funding the Abomination of Desolation
The 24.3 million euro dividend paid to Leo XIV is not a pious offering—it is fuel for the machinery of apostasy. Every euro finances the propagation of false doctrine, the suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass, and the persecution of faithful Catholics who refuse to submit to the conciliar revolution. Pius IX, in Etsi Multa (1873), condemned those who claim the Pope “fell into heresy,” yet the very structures they defend now openly promote heresy. The IOR’s dividend is thus cooperation in evil, violating the divine law that forbids formal or material cooperation with heresy.
Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law states that “every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration… if the cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” The post-conciliar “clergy” have done precisely this—embracing religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), and the evolution of dogma. Their financial institutions, however profitable, are illegitimate and their proceeds tainted.
The Illusion of Legitimacy Through Institutional Continuity
The article notes that the IOR was founded by Pius XII in 1942. This appeal to historical continuity is a classic tactic of the conciliar sect: using pre-revolutionary origins to legitimize post-revolutionary apostasy. But Pius XII did not consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as requested at Fatima—a false apparition widely regarded as a Masonic psychological operation (see False Fatima Apparitions). Nor did he prevent the infiltration of Modernism into the Church’s hierarchy, which St. Pius X had already condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907) as “the synthesis of all errors.”
The IOR’s 115 employees and 12,000 clients are not members of the true Church. They are participants in a paramasonic structure that occupies the Vatican—the “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place” (Matt. 24:15). Their financial acumen cannot substitute for the absence of valid jurisdiction, true sacraments, and orthodox faith.
Conclusion: Profit Without Grace Is Spiritual Bankruptcy
The soaring profits of the Vatican bank are not a sign of divine favor but of spiritual bankruptcy. They reveal an institution that has exchanged the poverty of Christ for the riches of the world, the preaching of the Gospel for the management of assets, and the salvation of souls for the satisfaction of clients. As Our Lord warned: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).
The faithful must reject this system entirely. The true Church endures—not in the marble halls of the Vatican, but in the hidden communities of Catholics who profess the integral faith, celebrate the Most Holy Sacrifice according to the ancient rite, and refuse all compromise with Modernism. Let the conciliar sect count its euros; we will count our prayers, our sacrifices, and our fidelity to the immutable Tradition of the Church.
Source:
Vatican bank’s profit jumps 55.5% over previous year (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 12.05.2026