For many years, the advertising investment of ecclesiastical institutions moved in an imprecise, almost artisanal terrain. Ads in print, radio spots, or diffuse sponsorships were justified with generic arguments about public presence, prestige, or social influence. It was a world of weak metrics and lax controls, in which good faith seemed sufficient guarantee. That world no longer exists.
Digital advertising has introduced a decisive novelty: objectification. Today, impacts are counted, audiences are audited, and costs per thousand impressions are easily compared. There are market prices, clear references, and multiple alternatives. This is not an ideological or technological issue, but a legal one: when an economic decision is measurable, it is also evaluable. And when it is evaluable, it generates responsibility.
However, a part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, along with dependent institutions and companies, continues to act as if living in another time. Poorly advised bishops, technically naive managers, settled in a naïf view of the media ecosystem, seem to believe that everything is permitted if the intention is good. They confuse the religious purpose with a sort of economic immunity. It is advisable to say it clearly and with respect: that confusion is no longer just pastoral or strategic, it is legally dangerous.
Investing Church money directly or indirectly in advertising is not a symbolic gesture or a statement of affinity. It is a patrimonial operation carried out with assets that do not belong to the manager, but to the community of the faithful. Whoever administers those funds is subject to a strict duty of diligence and loyalty. When an ecclesiastical institution pays prices far superior to the market value for digital advertising, without serious and documented technical justification, we are not facing a simple bad communicative decision, but an objectifiable economic harm.
The issue is simple and it is advisable not to sugarcoat it. If a medium has a small audience, irrelevant traffic, and null real impact, but receives institutional advertising at exorbitant prices, the operation lacks economic sense. And when that lack of sense is persistent, systematic, and quantifiable, it stops being innocent to become suspicious. Digital advertising does not allow hiding the overprice: costs per impression are compared, data remains, and the damage can be proven.
Here appears a concept that in a complacent Church lulled by clericalism some prefer not to pronounce: dishonest administration. It does not require personal enrichment, nor envelopes, nor hidden commissions. It is enough to manage others’ assets in a way contrary to their interest and cause an evaluable patrimonial damage. Paying far above the market for ineffective, ideologized advertising without measurable return can fully fit into that figure, especially when objectively better, cheaper, and more effective alternatives exist.
It is advisable to warn about it in a pastoral spirit, but without ambiguities. Financing with Church money heretical, marginal, or irrelevant media that barely have readers is not only a crazy communicative strategy. It is a decision that demands serious explanations. It is not enough to invoke dialogue, cultural presence, or good intention. In digital advertising, either there is measurable impact or there is waste. And waste, when the money is not one’s own, has consequences.
Infovaticana, for its part, does not receive advertising from absolutely anyone. It does not solicit it nor expect it. It is sustained exclusively thanks to the donations of its readers, which guarantees its independence. We do not demand institutional financing. But precisely because of that independence, we warn with all clarity that we are going to thoroughly investigate how the advertising of ecclesiastical entities is managed, to which media it is destined, under what conditions, and at what prices.
This is not an ideological war nor a media settling of scores. It is about legality, justice to the faithful, and responsibility in the use of assets that do not belong to those who administer them. The Church is not outside the law or the market. Good faith does not justify waste, and naivety does not exempt from responsibility. In the digital world, paying badly is not an opinion: it is a fact. And when the fact reveals damage, someone will have to answer.