Priest Francisco José Delgado has published an article on InfoCatólica that we recommend reading slowly, “Is Church Money Funding Anticatholicism?”, which ultimately says nothing we did not already know, but states it with the force of concrete detail: names, banners, rates, and an inventory of ecclesial institutions—EDIBESA, UMAS, the Dominican School of Theology, the Pontifical University of Salamanca, the Catholic University of Valencia, Comillas, Deusto, Loyola, La Salle, the Paulines, Edelvives, the Pablo VI Foundation, Messengers of Peace, the Camillians—whose advertising appears interspersed, paragraph by paragraph, in an article that brands the Church as intransigent and an enemy of the Gospel and of science for upholding its doctrine on homosexuality. The author finishes the job, as was to be expected, by citing Juan José Tamayo. In other words: money that comes, directly or indirectly, from the faithful’s efforts, providing financial support to a media outlet whose editorial line is not merely critical of the Church but openly opposed to its doctrine and, on more than a few occasions, a vehicle for positions that are simply heretical, dressed in that stale, outdated progressivism of a 1970s priest that no longer convinces even its own but continues to be paid on time.
An atypical phenomenon that no one can pretend not to see anymore
There is something deeply atypical about all this. It is not normal for a portal with an audience that, according to SimilarWeb’s accumulated data for 2025, hovers around 6.5 million annual visits—compared to more than 18.5 million for InfoVaticana, 16.5 million for InfoCatólica, or more than 12 million for Religion in Freedom—to concentrate such a density of institutional ecclesial advertising. It is not normal for a medium read several times less than the major Spanish Catholic portals to nevertheless be the preferred showcase for advertising from pontifical universities, religious publishers, and mutuals founded by the Episcopal Conference itself. Nor is it normal for bishops and Vatican officials—there are the complaisant interviews with those who seem to be positioning themselves for higher posts, or the repeated use of the portal as a loudspeaker by Curia officials such as Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu—to use that same medium as a forum for self-promotion, as if appearing in it earned points on the ecclesiastical career ladder.
When advertising does not follow the audience and the hierarchy does not follow the faithful, but both systematically converge on the minority medium that despises them, the question is no longer journalistic: it is administrative, and where appropriate, legal.
What we already explained: advertising is not paid for as one wishes
In January of this year we published “Church Money and Digital Advertising: The Red Line of Disloyal Administration”, in which we recalled something elementary that comfortable clericalism prefers not to hear: digital advertising has objectified what was previously artisanal. Today impressions are counted, audiences are audited, and costs per thousand impressions—the CPMs—are easily compared against market benchmarks. Whoever administers their own money can throw it away as they please; whoever administers someone else’s money—the money of a diocese, of an ecclesial mutual, of a company owned by the Church, that is, ultimately, the money of the faithful—is subject to a strict duty of diligence and loyalty, and cannot contract advertising at prices disconnected from real market value without serious, documented technical justification. Disloyal administration does not require envelopes or hidden commissions: it is enough to manage third-party assets contrary to their interest, causing an assessable patrimonial harm. Paying persistent overprices for advertising in a marginal-audience medium, when objectively larger and more effective alternatives exist, ceases to be a poor communicative decision and becomes something that demands explanations; and if behind that off-market purchase there were any attempt to buy wills or some arrangement we do not know about, it would be even more serious. How far will they exhaust the patience of the faithful before legal action is taken?
In March we broke it down in detail with the UMAS case: mutualists who asked to know the amounts paid, the actual visits generated, and the resulting effective CPM, and who to this day still have no response. Opacity, in an entity that manages resources of Church institutions, is not a minor detail: it is an anomaly that could be indicative of agreements misaligned with real market value. And UMAS, as we warned then, is only the beginning.
The price of pointing it out
We also know what comes next, because the mechanism is as predictable as it is old. Whoever points out the incongruity—today Father Delgado—immediately activates the levers of environmental repression: articles against him begin—oh, coincidence—the sensationalist compilations of statements taken out of context, personal targeting, the attempt to turn the whistleblower into the problem so as not to have to respond to the complaint. It is the reaction of a clientelist ecosystem that cannot discuss the data—the rates are published, the banners are visible, the audience figures are auditable—and therefore attacks the people. We ourselves know that treatment, and so do our shareholders, whose names and images are used to target them in frequent absurd campaigns. Let those who do it know that we not only knew what we were getting into, but that from now on there will be much more intense activity.
Our freedom and to whom we owe it
InfoVaticana does not receive advertising from any official institution. We neither ask for it nor expect it. The last time institutional funding was offered to us, it was on the condition of withdrawing certain content about the X campaign, and it was rejected; that experience, which we recounted at the time, taught us that the money did not buy our silence, but it forced us to look more closely at where that money circulates with apparent normality. We are sustained by the donors and shareholders who believe in this project, and precisely for that reason we are free: professionals with lives made outside the clientelist networks described here, without a bishop who can dismiss us, without a Jesuit or Dominican university that can withdraw the banner, without a diocese that can turn off the tap. That freedom neither they nor anyone else can give us or take away from us, and if God grants us health, this team has decades left to continue exposing incongruities, heresies, and corrupt practices; to continue denouncing negligent management in abuse cases, whoever the person responsible may be; and to defend, with all humility but with all determination, something as simple and at the same time as profound as the Catholic faith of always. Not its modernist deformation: not that of those who worship Pachamama, nor that of those who want to “deconstruct” the family to make way for the LGBT agenda, nor that of those who promote women’s priesthood and female bishops, nor that of those who no longer believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
And a final word of gratitude, the most important. To the brave priests who, like Father Delgado, do depend on a diocese, a structure, a superior; who live within institutions where these incongruities are financed at overprice and where raising one’s voice carries a personal cost that we do not pay. They are on the front line of a battle in which we have the privilege—the blessing—of fighting without ties and with a clear conscience. May God sustain them.
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