The Bible-Final Testament: The Book of Truth- Chapter 03



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Chapter 3

The single largest asset class owned by the Vatican is also the easiest to physically see, as it cannot be hidden.

The Vatican is by far the largest holder of land titles for any organisation or government in the world with visible title to around US $316 Billion of property (churches, schools, hospitals etc) and around US $2,623 Billion of investment property hidden in an extremely complex networks of hundreds of thousands of trusts and front companies.

The current market property value of Vatican City, in the heart of Rome alone is worth between US $1 Billion and $3 Billion. This excludes the value of the priceless artworks and valuables stored within its walls.

The most valuable property holdings of the Catholic Church by nation is the United States with around $50 Billion in visible property holdings and around $507 Billion in hidden property holdings through a massively complex network of front companies and trusts.

The next most valuable property holdings are Germany (US $297 Billion of which only $29 Billion is visible property), France (US $282 Billion of which only $28 Billion is visible), Italy (US $230 Billion of which around $23 Billion is visible), Brazil (US $194 Billion of which around $26 Billion is visible) and Spain (US $158 Billion of which around $15 Billion is visible).

What are the major property portfolio holdings by key nations? How then did the Catholic Church accumulate such a historic and massive property portfolio? How is the Catholic Church still able to hide such massive property investments while still successfully claiming to be “poor”? How reliable are these numbers to the truth?

Major property holdings of the Catholic Church

The Major property holdings of the Catholic Church are listed in the following table. The property investments are divided into visible property holdings and hidden property holdings.

Nation	Catholics	Visible	Hidden
	(m)	(US millions)	(US millions)
United States	83.2	$ 50,179	$ 507,363
Germany	27.9	$ 29,783	$ 268,046
France	54.7	$ 28,245	$ 254,209
Italy	49.2	$ 23,096	$ 207,866
Brazil	150.3	$ 26,260	$ 168,260
Spain	37.1	$ 15,827	$ 142,440
Mexico	93.7	$ 21,147	$ 135,499
Belgium	7.8	$ 9,558	$ 96,643
Canada	12.8	$ 8,393	$ 84,864
Austria	6.0	$ 7,514	$ 75,979
Argentina	35.9	$ 9,550	$ 70,031
Poland	34.5	$ 8,906	$ 65,308
Colombia	38.9	$ 9,319	$ 59,710
Philippines	73.3	$ 8,999	$ 50,993
Ireland	3.5	$ 4,241	$ 42,879
Chile	14.8	$ 5,203	$ 38,153
Peru	25.4	$ 5,800	$ 32,866
Hungary	6.7	$ 4,033	$ 29,577
Netherlands	5.6	$ 3,343	$ 30,091
Portugal	9.9	$ 3,984	$ 29,220
Venezuela	24.6	$ 4,105	$ 23,263
Switzerland	3.4	$ 2,355	$ 23,808
United Kingdom	9.0	$ 2,395	$ 21,556
Australia	5.2	$ 1,871	$ 18,923

Visible property holdings are those property holdings clearly visible as being owned by the Catholic Church, while hidden property holdings represents between 85% and 90% of the total property holdings of the church.

History of property ownership of the Catholic Church

10.

The Roman Catholic Church has historically been the largest single owner of property holdings of the world for over 1,500 years.

11.

While the Catholic Church did hold direct title and sovereignty over the Papal States of Europe for close to 1,000 years, it has held effective property ownership for much larger land and assets since Emperor Theodosius in 370 CE and Charlemagne in 800 CE.

12.

Up until the 16th Century, the Church did not need to worry largely about proof of Title and property rights until the various schisms of Europe began seeing major profit centres such as England and others cease to be directly controlled by the Catholic Church.

13.

From that point on, the Catholic Church became obsessed in ensuring it had documented Title and claims using the “Gift of Constantine” as justification for all New world land claims and more and more estates and land across Europe. This change of stance meant that upon the conquest of the Americas for example, the Catholic Church remained firmly the largest land holders until this present day and ruthlessly protected its property interests for over four centuries.

14.

The next great change in affairs was under the stewardship of the Jesuits who seized the assets, titles and financial control of the Catholic Church during the Papal wars at the end of the 18th Century. By the time of the truce and re-establishment of the Jesuit Order at the start of the 19th Century, the Jesuits had already begun adopting a pro-active approach to both strategic property acquisition and property development.

15.

This represented a marked difference for the Catholic Church approach to property. Excluding the occasional cathedral, the traditional Vatican hierarchy had no real interest in developing land. In most cases, property title was used to prevent development and social improvement. In contrast, the Jesuits saw property development as a profitable means of leveraging an already massive portfolio to acquire even greater value and property assets.

16.

As a result, the growth of Christian universities and schools around the world, were in large part an outworking of the profit strategy to enhance the value of property of the church. The Jesuits also guided the Vatican to invest in building and property firms making the Catholic Church the largest property holders of modern high rise office buildings as well as apartments in the world. As a result, even with the loss of the physical property of the Papal states in 1870, the Catholic Church has continued to acquired greater holdings and property wealth of an unprecedented scale.

17.

In a way, the loss of the Papal States became one of the greatest benefits for the Catholic Church, for it removed a massive visible association of temporal property wealth and instead allowed the perpetuation of the modern myth that somehow the largest real estate empire the human race has ever known suddenly disappeared under the wise guidance of the Jesuits.

18.

That so many people are unaware of the magnitude of the churches property holdings and even have no idea of the history of the Vatican being the largest property holders of history is a testament to the brilliance of the church in the art of plausible denial and long term perceptual management.

Hiding property ownership

19.

The Catholic Church has developed sophisticated methods and network of hiding its real estate holdings while still maintaining control. These include continued influence to ensure disclosure laws concerning religious bodies remain largely non-existent in major Western nations, strategic approaches to running visible assets to minimum support as well as complex networks of trusts and front companies.

20.

The Catholic Church also re-organized itself in the last forty years of the 20th century to decentralize must of its property and asset management to its dioceses but with strict controls preventing any diocese from selling assets of the church without permission.

21.

In the United States, most Catholic diocese have complex trust arrangements with hundreds of companies and entities to diffuse its true property wealth. However even in the smallest and poorest of dioceses, the property value of the church exceeds tens of millions of dollars.

22.

For larger and wealthier dioceses such as Boston and New York, the network of companies and sub companies runs into the thousands making any investigation of just one Catholic region a major undertaking.

23.

Another effective method of hiding values is logging property holdings on their book value--rather than the current market value. It means, the church can claim to have property portfolios of only a few hundred million dollars, all of which is listed on the price when it was purchased.

Active campaigning against disclosure laws

24.

The most important weapon of the Catholic Church in hiding its wealth is the effective use of defective and/or non existent disclosure laws for religious organisations. More than anything else, the fact that the Church is not required to disclose proper accounting methods like every single other proper corporation is without question the most important method of subterfuge.

25.

The fact that western nations continue to absolve religious organisations, especially the Catholic Church from full and frank disclosure of all its assets, including the final owners of complex networks of trusts and front companies means the Vatican is still able to hide the majority of its wealth from its own faithful and the rest of the world.

Visible property holdings versus hidden property holdings

26.

As outlined, there are principally two types of property holdings of the Catholic Church determined largely by the degree to which their ownership and value can be hidden.

27.

Visible property holdings- schools, churches, hospitals etc
Hidden property holdings- golf courses, office high rise, industrial parks, residential apartments etc.

28.

While the total global value of visible property holdings of the Catholic Church are around US $316 Billion, the Vatican has developed an ingenious strategy over the past forty years to change the public mindset on the extent of its wealth.

29.

The Catholic Church has deliberately degraded its most emotional and valuable front lines assets for the most disadvantaged to support its false claim of having no money. In fact, the Catholic Church has gone to the outrageous step of actually closing front line services for homeless and disadvantaged people often in response to attacks and claims of being a wealthy organisation.

30.

This innovative and unique behaviour of sacrificing assets to protect the impression of being poor is best described as the “service hostage method”.

Service hostage method

31.

The service hostage method invented by the Vatican is a brilliant and very successful strategy of deliberately sacrificing key services for the most disadvantaged and poor of western communities in order to emphasize the false claim of having no money.

32.

In effect, the church uses the asset as a “hostage” against politicians and social leaders calling upon greater accountability or response to the behaviour of the church.

33.

This method has been extremely useful in the United States in taking the wind out of the number and size of sexual abuse cases once the lid was blown wide open on the systematic and traditional methods of the church promoting pedophilia of young children and open homosexuality.

34.

Rather than the church being on the defensive, the wealthiest nation of the Catholic Church, with total property interests of over $557 Billion simply has deliberately run many of its front line services into the ground, causing great pain anguish and in some cases deaths of individuals.

35.

Any claim then that the church has hidden “millions” is simply responded with the line “so you really think a church dedicated to Christian charity would be so heartless or evil to deliberate close important services if it had the money?”

36.

Of course, the physical witnessing of a church closing essential front line services and placing the lives of individuals at risk along with the “how could anyone be so evil” rhetoric has succeeded in most Western countries to convince most that any claims of hidden “millions” are simply fanciful. It never occurs to most people that they are dealing with an organisation wholly dedicated to the perpetuation of evil.

37.

That is why the ongoing practice of holding front line services as hostage, to intimidate, prevent and distract any investigation into the complete wealth of the church has been so successful until now.

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