Pope Leo XIV marks feast day as Vatican launches campaign to help erase its $57-68 million deficit

ROME (AP) – Pope Leo XIV on Sunday celebrated a special feast day traditionally used by the Catholic Church to drum up donations from the faithful, with the Vatican under the first American pope rolling out a new campaign to urge ordinary Catholics to help bail out the deficit-ridden Holy See.

Leo celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, marking the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul and thanked donors who have contributed, using the language of the publicity campaign to say their financial support was a sign of union with his young pontificate.

In churches around the world, Masses on the July 29 feast day often include a special collection for Peter’s Pence, a fund which both underwrites the operations of the central government of the Catholic Church and pays for the pope’s personal acts of charity.

With a promotional video, poster, QR code and website soliciting donations via credit card, PayPal, bank transfer and post office transfer, the Vatican is betting this year that an American-style fundraising pitch under the Chicago-born Leo will do more to help keep the Holy See bureaucracy afloat and erase its 50 million to 60 million euro ($57-68 million) structural deficit.

The video features footage of Leo’s emotional first moments as pope, when he stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica and later choked up as he received the fisherman’s ring of the papacy. With an evocative soundtrack in the background, the video superimposes a message, available in several languages, urging donations to Leo via the Peter’s Pence collection.

“With your donation to Peter’s Pence, you support the steps of the Holy Father,” it says. “Help him proclaim the Gospel to the world and extend a hand to our brothers and sisters in need. Support the steps of Pope Leo XIV. Donate to Peter’s Pence.”

At the end of his noon blessing Sunday, Leo used the same language about his first steps to say the Peter’s Pence fund is “a sign of communion with the pope and participation with his Apostolic Ministry.”

“From the heart, I thank those who with their gifts are supporting my first steps as the successor of St. Peter,” he said.

The fund has been the source of scandal in recent years, amid revelations that the Vatican’s secretariat of state mismanaged its holdings through bad investments, incompetent management and waste. The recent trial over the Vatican’s bungled investment in a London property confirmed that the vast majority of Peter’s Pence contributions had funded the Holy See’s budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe.

Between the revelations and the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed churches and canceled out the traditional pass-the-basket collection on June 29, Peter’s Pence donations fell to 43.5 million euros in 2022 – a low not seen since 1986 – that was nevertheless offset the same year by other investment income and revenue to the fund.

Donations rose to 48.4 million euros (about $56.7 million) in 2023 and hit 54.3 million euros (nearly $63.6 million) last year, according to the Peter’s Pence annual report issued last week. But the fund incurred expenses of 75.4 million euros ($88.3 million) in 2024, continuing the trend in which the fund is exhausting itself as it covers the Holy See’s budgetary shortfalls.

On top of the budget deficit, the Vatican is also facing a 1 billion euro (about $1.17 billion) shortfall in its pension fund that Pope Francis, in the months before he died, warned was unable in the medium term to fulfill its obligations.

Unlike countries, the Holy See doesn’t issue bonds or impose income tax on its residents to run its operations, relying instead on donations, investments and revenue generated by the Vatican Museums, and sales of stamps, coins, publications and other initiatives.

For years, the United States has been the greatest source of donations to Peter’s Pence, with U.S. Catholics contributing around a quarter of the total each year.

Vatican officials are hoping that under Leo’s pontificate, with new financial controls in place and an American math major running the Holy See, donors will be reassured that their money won’t be misspent or mismanaged.

“This is a concrete way to support the Holy Father in his mission of service to the universal Church,” the Vatican’s economy ministry said in a press release last week announcing the annual collection and new promotional materials surrounding it. “Peter’s Pence is a gesture of communion and participation in the Pope’s mission to proclaim the Gospel, promote peace, and spread Christian charity.”