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Criteria for guiding specific choices and arrangements to be completed in the area of financial management today

39. The subject of financial management for religious covers a wide variety of situations in the religious institutions, including a variety of social, cultural and political contexts: some countries have no form of state-guaranteed social security, either for health or pensions; there are countries where private education or hospital services provided by religious receive no public support; relationships with Government vary from excessive control bordering on expropriation of assets to situations in which the religious are exempt from taxes and enjoy many economic privileges. there are religious institutions that are poor and some that are rich and, within the same institution, there are some provinces that have few resources and others with abundant assets; within a single community there may be notorious inequalities in the use of financial assets; even within the same province there may be communities and works that have access to many economic resources and others that have only a few; it is not unusual to find affluent works or communities in a poor province; some economies are very centralised, at general or provincial level, whilst others are less so.

Despite the diversity that surrounds this theme, some concrete choices must be made and to do this we need a number of clear criteria which we can follow: