The Vatican revealed its real estate portfolio for the first time—and it includes over 5,000 properties around the world.

APSA directly administers 4,051 properties in Italy and entrusts to outside companies the administration of some 1,200 properties in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland, the report said.

The APSA budget synthesis highlighted the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. During the 2020 fiscal year, APSA reported a profit of almost 22 million euros ($25.8 million), a significant drop from the profit of 73.21 million euros ($86.3 million) in 2019.

Bishop Galantino, who was tapped by the pope in 2018 to head the office, told Vatican News that despite heavy losses due to lockdowns throughout the year, “prompt and concrete attention” was given to people and, especially, commercial businesses, who occupy buildings owned or managed by APSA.

However, not all Vatican-owned properties are sprawling buildings in swanky neighborhoods.

For example, the budget summary stated that market-rate rent collected from “prestigious properties” in Paris and London allowed APSA to offer the papal almoner’s office rent-free use of Palazzo Migliori, a four-story building located a stone’s throw away from St. Peter’s Basilica.

Once the residence of members of the Roman nobility, the 19th-century edifice was transformed into a shelter, day center and soup kitchen for the poor managed by the Community of Sant’Edigio, a Rome-based lay movement that already runs soup kitchens and a variety of programs for the city’s poor.

Additionally, Bishop Galantino told Vatican News that the Vatican’s purchase of a property near Paris’ famed Arc de Triomphe in 2017 for an estimated 14.4 million euros was made “to increase income for the Holy See and simultaneously to provide resources to invest in the construction of a church” as well as a Catholic school in a poor Parisian neighborhood.

The APSA holdings include farmland that produces almost exclusively grain and wheat, which are used to feed the animals at the papal farm in Castel Gandolfo, the bishop said.

The agricultural firm overseeing the farmland, he added, also participates in agricultural conservation programs “aimed at limiting and reducing soil erosion.”

APSA, he said, will complete a census of its land assets by the end of summer 2021, followed by an analysis and strategy proposals “to improve their relative income performance.”

The Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, known by its Italian initials APSA,