Vatican City: People gather in St. Peter’s Square as Pope Francis says the Easter Monday prayers on April 17.
Image: dpa
The amount of money that the German dioceses transfer to the Vatican as “Peterspfennig” is only roughly known. The FAZ has determined the total for the first time.
An this Sunday, Catholics in Germany and all over the world are again called upon to make a monetary “gesture of their solidarity with the diverse tasks of the successor of Peter”: In all services, the collection is held for the so-called Peter’s penny. In recent years, however, anyone who has wanted to know how much this collection of donations has raised for the Pope throughout Germany has waited in vain for a gesture of transparency; the Vatican was silent, the German Bishops’ Conference gave only approximate information, and most dioceses published the collection result in the official gazette at most. In general, people did not like to talk about the German money flows into the Vatican. Research by the FAZ has now made it possible for the first time to determine approximately the total amount that German Catholics are transferring to Rome: it is around ten million euros.
Remarkably, it was the Vatican that recently for the first time quantified the income from the Peterspfennig collection from the main donor countries; 2.4 million euros came from Germany. However, only about half of this was donated by the faithful: if the dioceses would only transfer the amount that the churchgoers put in collection bags or baskets, the Vatican would not even get half as much money. Most dioceses add about the same amount again. The Peterspfennig collection accounts for only part of the German transfers to Rome anyway. The largest item is the voluntary contribution of the dioceses. According to the Code of Canon Law, the bishops should, “because of the bond of unity and love”, contribute according to their possibilities to the Vatican being able to render its service to the universal Church.
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