[Cronos]

Simply put, they don't. Reasons range from the fact that no country is going to allow national treasures like art to be sold out of the country to the plain fact that unfortunately each country's diocese runs itself -- which is why the German one, for example, can regularly defy the Vatican on non-doctrinal issues (as did the Irish).

Your posts was saying that the trillion$$ owned by Catholics across the world like me (ok, I don't have trillions ;-P) would fork over all of that to the Vatican city state for any cause -- and your post is wrong.

I do give some (not enough) to Catholic charities and missions, but no, it doesn't go through the Vatican.

The Vatican doesn't have "access to as much of that wealth as they may ever need", not even wrt to individual dioceses who would baulk at giving all of it to the Vatican as they use it for charities etc.

[decimon]

If I’d known where this thread would go then I wouldn’t have started it