A piece by veteran Vatican beat journalist Francis X Rocca ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal late last week, reporting that only a small fraction of the Holy See’s annual Peter’s Pence collection — roughly 10 per cent — goes directly to papal charities, while roughly two thirds of the collection goes to the operating budget of the Holy See, with as much as a quarter available for investment (money that could, in theory, eventually go to the poor or generate returns that do).
People read the piece far and wide. Many readers’ takes — especially on social media — were predictably warm. A great many other news outlets in the Catholic and the mainstream secular press picked up the story and ran with it. Several outlets published pieces explaining what Peter’s Pence is and how the Vatican uses the collection.
