Passing the hat has been the church's business model for thousands of years.
I'm not sure the Vatican's revenue but I suppose a lot comes from the Vatican Bank and returns on their massive assets. Most of their charitable work comes from $2+ billion from the US Govt.
If you've seen Vatileaks on PBS, you know how frighteningly corrupt it is. The Pope's personal butler was a whistleblower, went to the media and then was arrested for possession of "classified" material. Sentenced to 18 months in prison but he instead served it in the Vatican. Then the Pope pardoned him.
The "Vatican Bank" (strictly, the Institute for the Works of Religion) has pretty miniscule assets by the scale of financial institutions, and returns in the high tens of millions annually.
> Most of their charitable work comes from $2+ billion from the US Govt.
Most of the funding for Catholic Charities, a US Catholic organization structured rather specifically to be able to accept government funding to private social charities given the particular regulatory regime in the US regarding church/state relations, comes from the US government, but that organization is not the whole of the charitable work of the Catholic Church in the US, much less the world.
http://news.yahoo.com/whats-vatican-banks-balance-sheet-1458...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/business/international/vat...
Catholic Charities is definitely the biggest source of charitable work in the US and the majority of their budget comes from the US Government. 62% in 2010. There's also CRS (international), hospitals, Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (international) etc. all of which are much smaller.
A majority of a plurality is not a majority.