Word: gollins
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Dates: during 1971-1971
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...notch above the Rockefeller Foundation. But this money is often badly invested. One bank trust officer scanned a diocesan portfolio and remarked, "If your grandmother were unusually timid, this is what she'd do with her money." Sometimes the yield does not even cover the cost of investment. Gollin thinks U.S. dioceses are "perhaps the least effectual investment institution in this country, if not in the world...
...Gollin says the bishops are partly to blame for the myths about Catholic wealth because they keep money matters secret. This "famine of information" also exists within church councils. The bishops are misinformed about their own holdings and have plunged into ill-advised building sprees because they did not realize how poor they really were. Another victim of secrecy is the beleaguered parochial school system, which consumes 60% of parish incomes. Gollin says that new public support will never come until the account books are opened and the bishops convince taxpayers that the schools really need the money...
Bemoaning the economic ignorance of most priests, a financial adviser to the New York archdiocese told Gollin, "It's a good thing they have God on their side." They need secular help as well. Urban parishes increasingly depend on raffles, lotteries, Monte Carlo nights and bingo to make ends meet. Priests often consider gambling demeaning, if not immoral, but their parishes need it. The annual $15,000 or so it provides may keep the parish school open. One priest explains, "Bingo isn't a sign of greed. It's a confession of defeat-an admission that...
...religious orders in America are legendary lodes, but Gollin guesses that they really hold only $150 million in cash and securities. Most of their $8.2 billion in assets is tied up in unprofitable universities and other schools. However, he figures that they can keep solvent if they concentrate on more businesslike use of their skilled, dedicated manpower, and abandon such unprofitable pastimes as raising vegetables and selling fruitcakes...
Mussolini's Millions. Gollin guesses that the wealth of Catholicism round the world totals $70 billion, most of it tied up in real estate. As for the church's headquarters, Gollin's two chapters on Vatican finances depict a much shrewder investment operation than that in the American branch office. In 1929 Mussolini paid the Vatican, which was then virtually broke, $92 million in return for Italy's previous takeover of the Papal States. By 1968, Vatican-employed businessmen, chiefly Bernardino Nogara, a Jewish banker, had parlayed this into a $300 million stake in the Italian...