The Vatican Bank launched two new equity benchmarks on Tuesday that choose investments which adhere to Catholic principles, CBS News reported.
The initiative was established in partnership with Morningstar, a Chicago-based financial services firm, and represents "an abnormal association" between the Vatican and the financial sector, according to Euronews.
The indexes, which are called 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 (IOR), the formal name for the Vatican's primary financial institution.
Each index includes 50 medium- and large-cap firms that align with the institute's approach to ethical Catholic investing and join a crowded field of so-called ESG funds — those that invest according to environmental, social or governance-based guidelines, CBS News reported.
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.
Bloomberg reported that the indexes are composed largely of tech companies and financial stocks, including Meta and Amazon.com in the U.S. index.
These indexes come more than a decade after S&P Dow Jones Indexes 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.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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