Querying Church financial records in chat

Ask Magisterium AI about diocesan and Holy See financial statements — revenue, expenses, net assets, Peter's Pence, annual appeals, and ~1,300 other metrics.

May 22, 2026

Church financial records — audited statements, annual reports, and published budgets — are searchable through Spiritual Statistics. The database covers about 630 entities: dioceses, archdioceses, eparchies, and Holy See bodies including the Holy See itself, APSA, the IOR (Vatican Bank), and Ospedale Bambino Gesù. Coverage runs roughly 2009 through 2025.

What is in the financial database

Roughly 16,700 financial facts across 1,300 distinct metric codes. Highlights include:

  • Income side — total revenue, operating income, Peter's Pence collections, annual appeals (Catholic Stewardship Appeal, Cardinal's Appeal, and equivalents), 8xmille / Kirchensteuer / church-tax allocations.
  • Spending side — total expenses, operating expenses, charitable disbursements, aid to the poor.
  • Balance sheet — total assets, total liabilities, net assets / equity / fund balance.
  • Result — surplus / deficit, change in net assets, net accounting result.

Each row carries the entity name, country, fiscal-year-end date, currency, and where possible a link to the source statement. Coverage is strongest for the United States (about 96 entities), Italy (116), France (77), Canada (55), Brazil (45), Spain (44), and Poland (38).

Asking a financial question

What was the Archdiocese of Boston's total revenue in 2023?

Show Peter's Pence collections worldwide over the last ten years.

Compare net assets of the Holy See, APSA, IOR, and Bambino Gesù, most recent fiscal year.

How much did the Diocese of Brooklyn spend on charity in 2022?

Plot the operating result of the Archdiocese of Paris each year since 2015.

A note on currency

Figures are stored in the currency of the audited statement — euros for European dioceses, dollars for US dioceses, and so on. The AI will keep currencies separated in totals and conversions; if you ask for a worldwide total, expect the breakdown by currency rather than a single figure unless you specify a target currency.

Holy See bodies

The Holy See's central bodies are queried by name and are not tied to a diocese:

  • Holy See (general financial statement) — overall consolidated figures for the Curia and Holy See departments.
  • APSA (Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See) — manages Holy See real estate and investments.
  • IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione, the Vatican Bank).
  • Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù — the Holy See's pediatric hospital.

What is not in this database

  • Parish-level financials — coverage is at diocesan and Holy See level only.
  • Diocesan finances for entities that have never published an audited or summary statement.
  • Religious-order finances — separate from diocesan and Holy See accounts and not currently in the dataset.

The four databases behind Spiritual Statistics

Magisterium AI ships with four distinct Catholic datasets. The chat picks the right one (or combines several) based on your question — you do not need to specify which to use.

  • Catholic statistics on countries and dioceses — the Vatican Statistical Yearbook (Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae) and Annuario Pontificio. 51 annual snapshots from 1973–2023, covering ~235 countries and ~2,800 ecclesiastical jurisdictions worldwide.
  • Saints database — over 12,500 saints, blessed, venerables, and servants of God with biographical detail, canonization status, feast days, and patronages.
  • Ecclesiastical Directory — popes, living and historical bishops, cardinals, religious orders, basilicas, cathedrals, shrines, conclaves, consistories, ecumenical councils, apostolic nunciatures, bishops' conferences, pontifical universities, and Roman Curia departments.
  • Church financial records — audited financial figures for ~630 dioceses, archdioceses, eparchies, and Holy See bodies (Holy See, APSA, IOR, Bambino Gesù), including total revenue, expenses, net assets, Peter's Pence, annual appeals, and ~1,300 other metrics.

Limits and access

Free accounts can run three Spiritual Statistics queries per week and twenty data visualisations (charts) per week. Pro, Org, and Enterprise plans get unlimited Spiritual Statistics and unlimited data visualisations.

All four datasets are queried through the same chat tool. If the AI cannot find what you asked for, it will say so plainly — it does not invent figures, and every chart or profile is grounded in a row that exists in the database.

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