Cardinals and high officials of the Roman Curia will now have to pay for their own houses. A rescript following Pope Francis' meeting with Maximino Caballero Ledo, the new Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, asked that 'everyone make an extraordinary sacrifice to allocate greater resources to the mission of the Holy See.' This cost-saving measure is intended to offset the $10.5 million deficit the Vatican faced at the end of the 2021 financial year.
Before this rescript, cardinals and heads of the dicasteries were able to use real estate owned by Curial Institutions or the Holy See for free. Most of the properties are apartments between 800 and 2,000 square feet around St. Peter's Square.
Now, the rescript requires that property owners charge market price for these buildings. Normally, cardinals in Rome are paid between $3,000 and $4,000. But in 2021, they took a 10% cut in their salaries, mainly due to the drop in income from the Vatican Museums during the pandemic.
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