{"id":299495,"date":"2026-02-15T15:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T15:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/299495\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T15:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T15:05:07","slug":"more-sp-500-than-sermon-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/299495\/","title":{"rendered":"more S&#038;P 500 than sermon \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Vatican\u2019s latest foray is not theological but financial, following the launch of two new stock indices in conjunction with Morningstar \u2013 one for the US, one for the euro zone \u2013 calibrated to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/catholic-church\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/catholic-church\">Catholic<\/a> principles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may well follow, and there could be demand. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas notes existing Catholic ETFs have \u201cheld up pretty well\u201d, with the Global X S&amp;P 500 Catholic Values ETF currently holding more than $1 billion (\u20ac840 million) in assets. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Most such products are US-focused and a Vatican-backed range could appeal more broadly, particularly in Europe and Latin America.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Backtested over the past decade, the results look more than respectable, with the US and European Catholic indices generating annualised returns of 18 and 10 per cent, respectively.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">One reason for this is that the US index is less papal portfolio than plain vanilla mega-cap growth. More than 20 per cent sits in four names \u2013 Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, and Tesla \u2013 and almost half in the top 10, which also include Apple, JPMorgan, Broadcom, Visa, Micron, and Alphabet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Some inclusions might raise eyebrows. Big tech\u2019s dominance brings with it familiar controversies regarding misinformation, mental health, anti-union policies and difficult working conditions, privacy, tax engineering, and so on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Meanwhile, the inclusion of names such as Visa and JPMorgan illustrate how historic debates about usury and double-digit interest rates have evolved over time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Some names may give religious investors pause, but this tension isn\u2019t unique to this index \u2013 it\u2019s common across ESG (environmental, social, and governance) funds. Once you strip out tobacco, gambling and controversial weapons, you\u2019re largely left with the same tech-heavy US giants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Commercially, this makes sense. Excluding too many companies risks chronic underperformance, and underperformance kills ETFs far faster than ethical misgivings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The church may have distinctive moral teachings, but when it comes to equity portfolios, it looks remarkably like everyone else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vatican\u2019s latest foray is not theological but financial, following the launch of two new stock indices in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,12780,61,60],"class_list":["post-299495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-catholic-church","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}