I don’t know if this will help, but one of the reasons the Church is considered wealthy is because of the artworks, historical artifacts, architectural landmarks, so on and so forth that it owns. Chalices and monstrances, as one example, are required to be made of gold if I’m not mistaken. Statues and stained glass windows are worth quite a bit, not to mention the cathedrals themselves. But then one must also remember, these things are more often than not, if not entirely, donated. Even the (more decorative) doors to the chapel in my college town are donated by one of the parish families, and there’s even a small plaque in the chapel with the families’ names on it.
All of these things are indeed worth a large sum of money. But it’s not as if we can just auction off or smelt down the previous popes’ papal crowns. They’re historical and artistic masterpieces donated to the Church, created by craftsmen from whatever era they lived in. Likewise, we can’t exactly sell off the statues the Vatican is in possession of. They’re historical art pieces in the Vatican museum. The Church also donates not only money but an immense amount of time to various charities, missions, schools, hospitals etc.
I’ve noticed people like to talk about how much money the Vatican and the Catholic Church have, as though it’s just sitting there twiddling its thumbs atop a mountain of gold. It’s not as if they can just sell St. Peter’s Basilica to the highest bidder, or sell the Pieta, though I would love to be able to buy either of those. It just confuses me to no end when people talk about the Vatican’s money as though they’re not using it properly, as though they should sell the papal crown and the Sistine Chapel and Notre Dame and use the money to buy rice for villages in Africa. It’s not as though the Church isn’t already doing that through it’s multitudes of ministries (which do in fact require funding). But people like feeling as though they have the moral high ground. If I personally just came into ownership of the same amount of money the Church has, it would indeed be terribly irresponsible and uncharitable of me not to spend a good deal of it to help people in need. But then, I’m also not an organization that needs to feed (insert number of priests and religious) who serve over 1 billion people, plus the remaining 6 billion, spread across 6 continents.
