We came across a number of posts on the social media platform X on the following topic (1, 2):
Posted soon after the death of Pope Francis on 21 April 2025, the posts commented on the amount of wealth that he had accumulated.
However, two clusters of highly contrasting narratives were observed—some posts suggested that the Pope owned just $100 at the time of his death and embraced poverty, while others suggested that he owned millions, with figures such as $16 million or $100 million mentioned.
Various descriptors for measures of wealth emerged among the posts, with the two most common being ‘personal wealth’ and ‘net worth’. These terms are in fact highly similar to each other.
Personal wealth measures the total value of all the assets owned by an individual. Net worth is the most commonly used measure of wealth, calculated by determining the market value of all physical and intangible assets owned, and then subtracting all liabilities.
As the X posts did not attribute the figures for the Pope’s wealth to any specific sources, we conducted a web keyword search on the claims.
A Wealth of Sources
The earliest published web articles about the wealth of the Pope for the $100, $16 million and $100 million figures appear to be from Celebrity Net Worth (CNW), The Mirror, and Marca respectively.
Each publication issued an article on the topic on 21 April, and we found several other articles that referenced these sources when estimating the Pope’s wealth.
CNW, a site that since 2008 has published articles that estimate the wealth of prominent figures, suggested that the Pope had $100 at the time of his death as the Pope ‘did not have a salary’ and that popes ‘take a vow of poverty and live a modest life’.
CNW also indicated that traditionally, popes have resided in the ‘lavish Papal Apartments within the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican—an expansive suite of ten rooms’, but that Pope Francis had broken with this tradition, choosing to live in the more modest Vatican guesthouse and stating a desire for simplicity, community, and accessibility.
The Mirror, a UK-based tabloid newspaper, indicated that the Pope had a ‘jaw-dropping net worth of £12million (approximately USD 16 million) due to the assets associated with his papal office’, which included five cars, an apartment and clothing.
However, The Mirror corroborated CNW’s reports about the Pope’s humble lifestyle and choice to live in the guesthouse, adding that the Pope had declined the salary he was entitled to from the church.
The Mirror also stated that popes usually leave everything to the Holy See, the central government of the Catholic Church, when they die.
Marca also confirmed that Pope Francis had either donated or endowed his salary to trusts or foundations rather than receiving it and that he had stayed true to his Jesuit philosophy. Jesuits are a Roman Catholic order whose members take vows of poverty, and Francis was the first Jesuit pope.
Even so, like The Mirror, Marca counted the assets that came with the office of the pope as part of Francis’s net worth, estimating it even higher at $100 million.
The Spanish publication added that the Pope had owned five cars, but otherwise did not provide a breakdown of their estimate other than to mention that the Vatican Church has an ‘outrageous net worth’.
No Clear Figure
The disparity between CNW and the newspapers’ estimates of Pope Francis’s wealth is therefore reflective of the different methods used in calculating his net worth.
While CNW did not include the assets accorded to the Pope by the church as part of his wealth, The Mirror and Marca did so, leading to them arriving at much larger figures.
Further searches revealed no concrete indications of the Pope’s wealth. The Pope’s final testament did not reference his belongings, and in articles released later by the Vatican, we only found one reference—a report that the Pope’s popemobile would be converted into a mobile health clinic for the children of Gaza.
Online resources like Investopedia indicate that while the Vatican Church manages close to $6 billion in assets, largely through the Vatican Bank, much of these holdings are deposits and investments from account holders that include Catholic clergy, Vatican employees and Catholic orders around the world.
However, determining the exact wealth owned by the Vatican is difficult due to secrecy and complexity in determining the value of certain items. For example, a major component of the wealth of the Church would be its extensive real estate holdings and art collection, which contains pieces by famed creators such as Michaelangelo and Raphael that would be hard to appraise.
While the Vatican’s economy minister revealed that the Vatican’s total net assets excluding the Vatican Bank and Museum were about 4 billion euros in 2019, there do not appear to be any publicly available figures for the assets that were accorded specifically to the Pope.
Poor Man, Rich Office
In conclusion, the vastly differing figures for the personal wealth or net worth of Pope Francis at his death is primarily due to different approaches to the assets provided to him by the Vatican as part of the office of the pope.
The Mirror and Marca chose to estimate and include these assets, arriving at sums in the millions, while CNW omitted them.
However, there appears to be little conclusive evidence that would help determine the Pope’s wealth, with or without his papal assets. Moreover, there remains a large degree of opacity surrounding the wealth of the Vatican Church.
Whether or not the papal assets were included, the sources agree that Pope Francis stayed true to his Jesuit philosophy by eschewing several means of wealth that were available to his predecessors.
As such, the claim that Pope Francis’s personal wealth was just $100 at the time of his death is unproven and dependent on the method of calculation.
