Pope Leo XIV dissolves Pope Francis’ 2025 fundraising commission via chirograph, dismisses members, orders new group to design streamlined donation system.
Newsroom (04/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) In a decisive move to streamline the Holy See’s financial administration, Pope Leo XIV on Thursday published a chirograph titled Vinculum unitatis et caritatis that immediately abolishes the Commissio de donationibus, the central fundraising body established by Pope Francis only ten months ago.
The commission, created in February 2025 and approved ad experimentum for three years, had been tasked with coordinating donation campaigns among the faithful, episcopal conferences, and major benefactors. With the stroke of a pen, Pope Leo XIV declared all its founding norms devoid of “any canonical or legal force” and nullified every act it had issued to date.
The five-member body—presided over by Roberto Campisi, advisor for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, and including Archbishop Flavio Pace, Sister Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A., Silvana Piro, and Giuseppe Puglisi-Alibrandi—was simultaneously dismissed. All assets accumulated by the commission are to be transferred without delay to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).
The decision, the Vatican stated, followed consultations with experts and formal recommendations from the Council for the Economy, reflecting a broader papal priority on administrative efficiency in the economic governance of the Holy See.
Responsibility for liquidating the former commission falls to APSA, while the Secretariat for the Economy has been instructed to resolve any pending matters and to keep the Council for the Economy fully informed of every step taken.
In place of the dissolved structure, Pope Leo XIV has ordered the immediate creation of a new working group charged with designing “a renewed and more suitable model” for Holy See fundraising. Members of this group will be proposed by the Council for the Economy itself. The chirograph entered into force upon its publication Thursday in L’Osservatore Romano.
The move marks the second significant adjustment in under two weeks to financial reforms introduced under Pope Francis. On November 26, Leo XIV issued a separate decree placing the Fabbrica di San Pietro and the Basilica of St. Mary Major under the ordinary supervision of the Council for the Economy, emphasizing that the Holy See’s ongoing economic and financial reform demands “periodic reassessment and redefinition” of existing regulations.
Taken together, the rapid succession of measures signals the new pontificate’s determination to recalibrate the Vatican’s administrative and fundraising apparatus barely a year after the death of Pope Francis.
- Raju Hasmukh with files form ACI Prensa
Related Images:
