VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s bank has launched two new equity benchmarks designed to guide investments based on Catholic principles, adding to a growing universe of values-based indexes.
The benchmarks — the Morningstar IOR Eurozone Catholic Principles Index and the Morningstar IOR U.S. Catholic Principles Index — were developed by the Institute for the Works of Religion, the Vatican’s primary financial institution, in partnership with Morningstar, according to a statement.
The indexes are intended to “serve as a reference for Catholic investments worldwide,” the Institute for the Works of Religion said. Each index includes 50 medium- and large-capitalization companies selected to align with the institute’s approach to ethical Catholic investing.
New Benchmarks
According to analysts, the Vatican’s move places the new benchmarks within an already crowded market of environmental, social and governance-focused investment products, commonly known as ESG funds. Morningstar offers a range of other thematic indexes tied to sectors such as cybersecurity and robotics, as well as ESG themes including renewable energy and minority empowerment.
“Investors increasingly seek benchmarks that reflect specific values-based or policy-driven criteria,” Robert Edwards, managing director of indexes and EMEA at Morningstar, said in the Vatican bank’s statement.
How Index is Weighted
Bloomberg reported that the U.S. index is weighted heavily toward technology and financial stocks, including Meta and Amazon.com.
The launch comes more than a decade after S&P Dow Jones Indices introduced the S&P 500 Catholic Values Index, later licensed to Global X, an exchange-traded fund provider. NVIDIA and Apple are the largest holdings in that index, accounting for 8.2% and 6.8% of assets, respectively, according to Yahoo Finance.
Catholics represent the largest religious group in the United States, with more than 50 million members, according to the Pew Research Center.
