What does the Vatican own?

Answer 1

Catholic Answer The Vatican owns Vatican City, a couple square miles in the middle of Rome, it is its own city-state, independent from Italy. It has its own bank, post office, library, Churches, miles of museums and the Apostolic palace. They also own the Holy Father's summer home, Castle Gandolfo. For a monarchy that guides the spiritual lives of people the world over, and has for two thousand years, it owns remarkably little, but, then, as Our Blessed Lord told us, His Kingdom is not of this world.

Answer 2

Apart from Vatican city, the wealthy and secretive Vatican Bank, churches and museums, the Vatican also owns numerous precious artworks, many of which are held in permanent storage because there is insufficient space in the Vatican to display them. The Church could probably sell a small number, but could not sell very many of these works, since the sheer number would depress art prices around the world.

The Catholic Church owns substantial real estate in Rome and also wholly owns businesses other than the Vatican Bank, as well as having a major, diversified portfolio of corporate shares in banking, insurance, chemicals, steel, construction and real estate. Its holdings include American Tobacco, Fiat, General Motors, Imperial Tobacco and many others. Bankers can only estimate the Vatican's wealth, putting its share portfolio at $10 billion to $15 billion. Italian stockholdings alone were said to be $1.6 billion, or 15 per cent of the value of listed shares on the Italian market.