at the Vatican

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Vatican News

A new unified policy for financial investments of the Holy See and the Vatican City State is being launched this month. The new guidelines remove the autonomy of Roman Curia departments to invest their own money, placing all investments under the control of a special committee that will ensure all Church money follows strict protocols in line with Catholic teaching. The policy prohibits the Holy See from investing in weapons or the defence industry; pornography and prostitution; gambling; pro-abortion health centres and companies that work with embryonic stem cells or manufacture contraceptive products.

The Investment Policy aims to ensure that investments are aimed at contributing to a more just and sustainable world; protecting the real value of the Holy See's net worth, generating a sufficient return to contribute sustainably to the financing of its activities; and are aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church, with specific exclusions of financial investments that contradict its fundamental principles, such as the sanctity of life or the dignity of the human being or the common good. In this sense, it is important that they be aimed at financial activities of a productive nature, excluding those of a speculative nature, and above all that they be guided by the principle that the decision to invest in one place rather than another, in one productive sector rather than another, is always a moral and cultural choice.

The Policy has been approved ad experimentum for five years and enters into force immediately, with a moratorium period to adapt to the proposed criteria. Curial institutions will have to entrust their financial investments to APSA, transferring their liquidity to be invested – or their securities deposited with foreign banks or with the IOR itself – to the APSA account set up at the IOR for this purpose. The APSA, as the institution that administers the patrimony of the Holy See, will set up a single fund for the Holy See into which investments in the various financial instruments will flow, and will have an account for each institution, processing the reporting and paying the returns. The new Investment Committee, established by Praedicate Evangelium, will carry out – through APSA – the appropriate consultations aimed at implementing the investment strategy, and will evaluate the suitability of the choices, with particular attention to the compliance of the investments made to the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church, as well as the parameters of return and risk in accordance with the Investment Policy.

Companions of Oremus

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Mrs Mary Barsh Dr Stuart Blackie Anne Veronica Bond Lolita Botanes Richard Bremer Ms Virginia Pinto Cassama Mrs Erlinda Chin Francis George Clark R & L Collyer-Hamlin Daniel Crowley Angelita Caronan Duran Ms Georgina Enang Wendy Felstead Alfredo Fernandez Fred Gardiner William Gardner-Hunter Connie Gibbes Zoe & Nick Goodway Rosalinda Grimaldo Mrs Valerie Hamblen Bernadette Hau Mrs Cliona Howell Carl Stephen Patrick Hunter OBE Mrs Dorothy Hunter Alice M Jones & Jacob F Jones Poppy K Mary Thérèse Kelly Raymund Livesey

Alan Lloyd in memoriam

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Berenice Roetheli in memoriam

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Imperial Cultural Exchange

Lucien de Guise

There have been sport and music aplenty to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, but the arts have been less conspicuous. Saving the day is a spectacular exhibition that is being held, appropriately, at Buckingham Palace – or to be absolutely accurate the Queen’s Gallery next door. Running until early 2023, the theme is Japanese art, always welcome yet an unexpected choice for this year.

The title of the exhibition, Japan: Courts and Culture, explains the relevance of the show. The British royal family has been collecting Japanese works of art for a long time. There has also been an occasional kinship between these two island nations, although their shared history has not always been happy. As few of those who fought in the Second World War are still living, attention can revert to the more productive partnership of the First World War when Japan was an ally of the United Kingdom in the war against Germany.

Among the joys of this exhibition are the memorabilia of those pre-WWII times. There are photographs of the young Crown Prince Hirohito playing golf with his British counterpart, the Prince of Wales before he became Edward VIII. These personal interactions not only give this show its purpose and energy; they also illustrate the benefits of having a monarchy. Everything in the Royal Collection has been methodically stored over generations and there are plenty of people archiving everything in sight. Presidents don’t always seem to work the same way. We can see what was on the menu for these leaders of empires when they banqueted together. We can also learn about the music that was brought out to entertain them. It is possible that the Japanese Crown Prince was fed up with hearing Madame Butterfly by then, but he no doubt put on a good show of enjoying it being interpreted by a British military brass band.

Then there are the gifts exchanged between the two nations. How unexpected to see the same three feathers used by Prince Charles, the current Prince of Wales, appearing on a Japanese lacquer box for storing letters given to the previous holder of this title in 1922. The story, however, goes back much further than the Roaring Twenties. Even after Japan had closed its borders to foreign visitors in 1603, this distant empire remained a major trading power. Taking advantage of the chaos that beset China as it descended into civil war during the 17th century, Japanese ceramicists and other artisans were busy filling the trade gap, although these substitutes were not always understood to be from Japan when they reached their final destinations. Adoring collectors in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire often mistook them for the Chinese originals, which makes for some misleading inventories.

As so few enthusiasts of the time could tell the nations of East Asia apart anyway, it is often up to modern authorities to decide what is from where. It does not always matter, as so many of these export wares were produced for a foreign clientele and were not much appreciated in their homelands. Some are of a religious significance that was misunderstood in the Western world. One example that remains enigmatic is the vessel known universally by its Malay name, kendi. Extremely popular in the past among the Muslims of Southeast Asia for hygienic drinking, they are labelled as being used for washing hands. This might also have been true in some locations as hygiene has always been integral to Islamic worship. More acceptable for domestic consumption in Japan was Buddhist imagery, which is everywhere at this exhibition, often taking the form of the ambiguous Guanyin, ‘goddess of mercy’.

Visitors looking for evidence of Christian devotion will find slimmer pickings. There are none of the stunning ‘hidden Christian’ items that were very much a part of two hundred and fifty years of persecution. The British royal family would probably not have welcomed any such items into the collection, since these works were mostly inspired by the Jesuits in Japan. One object

A screen painting given by the Shogun of Japan to Queen Victoria in 1860