Simple answer, Catholicism has an estimated 1.2 billion persons, in every corner of the world for at least 500 years. This widely eclipses any other unified religion.
Yet its vastness is nebulous. Organizations have a great need to know what they are, what resources they have, what their potential is, and importantly, what they waste, to truly prosper.
A tales from Imperial Russia. The Emperor Nicholas I noticed something peculiar one day. A single guard stood at attention in the middle of a very large cobblestone parade ground, with seemingly no purpose.
After considerable inquiry, it was learned that more than a hundred years before, the young princess Catherine, later Catherine the Great, had admired a single flower growing through the cobblestone, so a guard was sent to watch over it. And guards had been sent to guard over the site of the long dead flower ever since.
Now imagine this error magnified by a million or ten million. And as many good things, ignored or forgotten over time, and there you have it, a superb reason for the Vatican to at least have a snapshot of the church, even if another will not be taken for a thousand years.
For ALL landowners. Not just Catholics.