Pope celebrates his 71st birthday but it’s Vatican employees who get the gift

VATICAN CITY (AP) —   Pope Leo XIV   celebrated his 71st birthday on Monday but it was Vatican employees who got the gift.

The Vatican published a papal decree repealing   2021 salary cuts   that Pope Francis had imposed on many Vatican employees as part of the Holy See’s COVID-19 cost-saving measures.

In the decree, Leo said the salary-containing measures “can now be overcome, 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.”

The unpopular salary cuts had included a 10% cut on pay for cardinals and smaller percentage salary cuts for office heads and lower-ranking priests and nuns. Biennial pay raises were frozen for senior lay employees, though lower-ranking lay employees continued to receive raises.

Francis had reasoned at the time that the cuts were necessary to save jobs, given the Holy See was also facing a structural deficit, estimated then at around 70 million euros, and a 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion)   pension fund shortfall .

The pandemic closed the Vatican Museums for months, depriving the Holy See of one of its main sources of revenue.…