The Institute for Works of Religion, better known as IOR or Vatican Bank, has announced its 2025 financial results. The Institute achieved a profit of 51 million euros net of expenses and taxes. A net growth compared to 2024, also due to an increase in customer deposits.
Of this profit, approximately half, 24 million, will go directly to the Pope, which will increase the proceeds from the Vatican bank’s activities by almost three-quarters compared to 2024.
The IOR budget
The fundamental data of the IOR budget for 2025 are:
- a very rapid growth in profits, which reached 51 million euros net, an increase of 55.5%;
- a net worth of 815 million euros, up 11.4%;
- 5.9 billion euros managed by the Vatican Bank;
- more than 12 thousand customers;
- 112 countries of the world reached.
The overall collection was divided into:
- 1.5 billion euros in current accounts;
- 3.4 billion euros in asset management;
- 864 million euros in securities under custody.
77% of the assets held by the IOR refer either to religious orders or to the dicasteries of the Holy See and other Vatican institutions. Private individuals, including Vatican employees and pensioners, represent approximately 6% of the assets managed by the bank.
How much did the Pope get from the IOR?
Within the report published by the IOR to explain its budget, it is specified that the Pope, as a shareholder of the bank, will receive a dividend of 24.3 million euros. In 2024 the IOR’s contribution to the charitable and religious works of the Holy See was 13.8 million euros.
One of the first acts of Pope Leo XIV after ascending to the papal throne concerned the IOR. Prevost has in fact allowed APSA, the Vatican “safe”, which manages money and properties belonging to the Holy See since Pope Francis reformed Vatican finances, to also use other banks, not just the IOR, to invest this assets.
Because in 2025 the IOR made such a high profit
Leone’s decision in some ways completes and in others modifies the system of reforms that Bergoglio imposed on Vatican finances. Previously, in fact, the Holy See had been the protagonist of a series of bad investments, which had caused heavy losses. Pope Francis, in 2022, published Praedicate Evangelium, a real reform of Vatican finances.
By entrusting the management of the IOR to two lay people he trusted, Jean-Baptiste de Franssu and Gian Franco Mammì, Bergoglio forced, not without resistance, Vatican finance to update itself to European transparency standards. This allowed the IOR to focus on investments, improving balance sheets.
To do so, however, he had entrusted all the investments of APSA’s assets to the IOR exclusively, precisely to circumvent the resistance of the Vatican bureaucracy. Now that the reforms have been completed, Leo XIV preferred to remove this power from the IOR, effectively allowing the Vatican to rely on the market to make the most efficient investments with its own assets.
It is therefore no coincidence that the IOR’s budgets improved following these reforms. From the balance sheet itself, “an active and disciplined management of portfolios and favorable market conditions” emerges, a phrase which underlines the role of the change in internal practices at the IOR in the growth of profit.
