Vatican Bank debuts two Catholic-themed equity indexes

The Vatican Bank launched two new equity benchmarks on Tuesday that pick investments based on Catholic principles.

The indexes, titled the Morningstar IOR Eurozone Catholic Principles and the Morningstar IOR US Catholic Principles, are “designed to serve as a reference for Catholic investments worldwide,” according to the  Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR, the formal name for the Vatican’s primary financial institution. 

Each index includes 50 medium- and large-cap companies that align with the institute’s approach to ethical Catholic investing. The Vatican’s indexes join a crowded field of so-called ESG funds, or those that invest according to environmental, social or governance-based guidelines.

The Vatican Bank said it is launching the new indexes in partnership with Morningstar, a Chicago-based financial services firm. Other indexes offered by Morningstar are based on industries ranging from cybersecurity to robotics, as well as ESG-based themes such as 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 IOR’s statement.

The IOR did not immediately respond to a request for comment about which companies are included in the indexes or the criteria used to select them. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the indexes are composed largely of tech companies and financial stocks, including Meta and Amazon.com in the U.S. index.

The indexes come more than a decade after S&P Dow Jones Indices launched the S&P 500 Catholic Values Index, which was licensed to Global X, a New York-based exchange-traded fund provider. NVIDIA and Apple are the top holding companies in the index, accounting for 8.2% and 6.8% of the assets, respectively, according to Yahoo Finance.

Catholics constitute the largest religious group in the U.S., with more than 50 million Catholic adults nationwide, according to Pew Research.