The Vatican has given itself a new investment strategy.
The Catholic Church usually keeps a low profile when it comes to money issues, since the popes in Rome, at least in this millennium, have always been aware that their material wealth and Christian teaching do not always go well together.
Pope Francis has at least provided a little more insight during his tenure.
However, the fact that the Vatican even issued a press release on changes in investment strategy, as happened last week, is highly unusual.
There is a reason for this: the message aims to make the ailing church appear in a better light.
From September 1st, Francis said that they no longer want to pursue financial transactions that are “speculative in nature”.
They are meant to be "productive in nature" instead.
The church leaders did not go into much detail, but shares in manufacturers of contraceptives, for example, should not find their way into the depot - and oil shares are not excluded, but rather no longer desired.
This may make sense from an ecclesiastical point of view, but with their new distinction, the Pope and his followers have fundamentally misunderstood or perhaps deliberately misinterpreted something: stocks are always both speculative and productive in nature.
They are speculative because their purchase expresses the hope for a better future, i.e. rising prices.
The thought is also in the Latin origin of the term speculation (roughly: "to peer into the distance"), which no one should know better than the Latin connoisseurs in the Vatican.
At the same time, however, shares are also of a productive nature, because the shareholders become co-owners of companies that produce things and thus, at best, increase the prosperity of society.
Pretending to have one without the other can be summed up in one word, if you will, Your Holiness: it is profoundly hypocritical.