Papal baby bonus paid to Vatican employees

Elise Ann Allen/ Crux• January 17, 2025

Pope Francis has decided to place Vatican money alongside his constant appeals for couples to procreate, offering both a financial support and incentive to permanent Vatican employees to have more children.

In a 15 January communique from the Governorate of Vatican City State, it was announced that as of 1 January 2025, families who have three or more children will receive a bonus of 300 euros ($308) a month.

“This is what the Pope decided for permanent employees of the Governorate,” the statement said.

The bonus, it added, is granted up until the children turn 18, or until their ordinary course of studies concludes, as long as a couple can provide necessary documents or certificates of enrolment from secondary schools and universities. In either case, the bonus could extend up to the age of 24, the communique said, but “no later”.

According to the Vatican’s communique, these changes are “a personal initiative of the Holy Father”, and were conveyed to the president of the Governorate, Cardinal Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, and to the secretary general, Sister Raffaella Petrini, in a 19 December audience.

On that occasion, the communique said, the Pope gave the order to “proceed immediately” in setting the wheels in motion for the change.

Pope Francis also expanded parental leave for Vatican employees who either have their own children, who adopt, or those who are already fostering children.

Whereas in the past, paid parental leave for fathers in these cases was only three days, the Pope has extended this leave to five days in the event of the birth of a child, the adoption of a child, or the entrance of a foster child into the home.

Observers and employees have long complained about the Vatican’s limited paternity leave, and while the extension from three to five days is considered a step in the right direction, there will undoubtedly still be discontent among those who feel the leave should be more generous.

For years Italy has had a staggeringly low birth rate that some have declared a national emergency – it is the oldest country in Europe, with the average age in 2024 being 48, and the birth rate in 2024 sitting somewhere between 1.2 and 1.3.

The Italian government has led various fertility campaigns in a bid to encourage couples to have more children. However, many citizens have complained that economic difficulties and the lack of affordable resources available to parents, such as childcare, alongside challenges of maintaining jobs that can support a growing household, make it difficult to have more children.

With much of Europe following the same trend, national leaders everywhere are increasingly concerned about the steady population decline and potential implications for the future.

This has been a concern for Pope Francis too and in many of his major public speeches, and during all of his recent travels, he has spoken of problems surrounding birth rates. He has praised couples with large families, making consistent appeals for couples to have more children.

He applauded the number of young people he saw during his tour of South East Asia last September, praising the likes of East Timor, where those under the age of 18 make up almost half of the population, and calling on countries like Singapore, which he visited during the same trip, to have more children.

This appeal for couples to grow their families was repeated by the pontiff during his 15 December 2025 day trip to Ajaccio, in Corsica, during which he lauded the number of youth present at his final Mass.

In the past, the Pope has also made the controversial appeal for Italians to welcome more migrants into their communities to compensate for the country’s lack of children.

In recent months, the Pope has also ordered pay cuts for cardinals and other senior figures in the Roman Curia in a bid to counteract the Vatican’s financial deficit and its growing pension crisis; however, it appears that he has also decided to use some of the savings to reward employees who choose to have larger families.

While pension obligations to retiring employees and curial officials remains a looming problem that the Vatican will have to face sooner or later, for now the Pope seems content to let that be and to put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, when it comes to urging couples to have more children.

Photo: Pope Francis holds a baby presented to him at the end of the weekly general audience at the Vatican, Vatican City State, 14 February 2024. (Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images.)