End of austerity in the Vatican: Pope Leo reverses the salary cuts imposed by Bergoglio

Today is his birthday, but he gave the present to his staff. In an Apostolic Letter in the form of a ‘Motu proprio’, Pope Leo XIV has decided to repeal Pope Francis’s provision of 23 March 2021, which provided for expenditure cuts through restrictions and reductions in salaries and seniority increments for staff of the Holy See, the Governorate of Vatican City State and other associated bodies (cardinals, other superiors and ecclesiastical and religious figures). “Those wage-containment measures adopted by my Predecessor in the Apostolic Letter in the form of a Motu Proprio ‘A Sustainable Future’, dated 23 March 2021, which were also necessary to address the exceptional challenge of the pandemic, and which had already been partially amended through the repeal of Article 3, by the Rescriptum ex Audientia of 16 June 2025, may now be superseded”, reads Pope Leo’s “Motu proprio” dated 1 September 2026, “in the certainty that the institutions of the Holy See and the Vatican City State will continue, through various means, their commitment to ensuring economic sustainability”.

For this reason, with effect from 1 September 2026, Pope Francis’s Apostolic Letter in the form of a Motu Proprio “is repealed, whilst definitively preserving, the effects produced during the period of its validity, including the effects produced by the suspension of the accrual of biennial seniority increments referred to in Article 5, which remains definitively acquired”, concluded Prevost.

Following Pope Francis’s decree, the salaries of the cardinals of the Curia were reduced by 10 per cent. The reduction for employees of the Holy See, the Governorate and other associated bodies in pay grades C and C1 – that is, heads and secretaries of the dicasteries – was 8 per cent. Finally, for clerical or religious staff, the reduction was 3 per cent. 

This is not the first time that Pope Leone has increased the salaries of those working in the Papal States. In May 2025, shortly after his election, Leone decided to reinstate the €500 bonus paid to Vatican employees to mark the election of the new Pope: a tradition of the Roman Pontiffs that Francis had abolished. 

On his 71st birthday, Pope Leo also announced the construction of a new building in the Vatican. “I hereby order,” he wrote in the handwritten document released today by a bulletin from the Holy See Press Office, “that the area known as the ‘Fontana dell’Autoparco’ and its surroundings be allocated to the Vatican Apostolic Archives and the Vatican Apostolic Library”, and that “work should proceed in accordance with the most modern architectural and technological principles, in compliance with current regulations, on the construction of a new building to be used primarily to meet the needs of the Vatican Apostolic Archives and the Vatican Apostolic Library, with space distributed equally between the two institutions, whilst reserving a portion for other services of the Vatican City State”.