Pope, citing pandemic effect, cuts pay for cardinals and other Vatican clerics

Vatican City — Trying to save jobs as the pandemic pummels Vatican revenues, Pope Francis has ordered pay cuts for cardinals and other clerics, including priests and nuns, who work at the Holy See.

In a decree being published on Wednesday by the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Francis said that starting in April cardinals' salaries will be reduced 10%. Superiors of the Holy See's various departments will be hit by 8% cuts while lower-ranking priests and nuns will see 3% vanish from their paychecks. In the decree he signed on Tuesday, the pope noted that the Holy See's finances have been marked by several years of deficit. Worsening those financial woes, the pope wrote, was the COVID-19 pandemic, "which has impacted negatively on all the sources of revenue of the Holy See and Vatican City State."