Mormon Church Finances Revealed - The Widow's Mite Project w/ Radio Free Mormon | Ep. 1736

The LDS Church's Hidden Billions: What the Widow's Mite Project Reveals About Mormon Finances

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is worth approximately $250 billion. That's not a fringe estimate or activist hyperbole. It's the conclusion of a meticulous financial analysis called the Widow's Mite Project, which compiled decades of publicly available data, leaked documents, and court filings to estimate the church's total wealth. The church itself has never disclosed this figure. In fact, the church discloses almost nothing about how much money it holds, where it invests, or how it spends member contributions. For a faith organization that collects tithing from roughly 17 million members worldwide, this opacity raises serious questions about financial accountability.

The Widow's Mite Project exists because the LDS Church will not. Featured in a recent Mormon Stories Podcast episode, the project represents something unprecedented in Mormon scholarship: a collaborative, peer-reviewed attempt to reverse-engineer church wealth using only information the church was either required to disclose or that became public through leaks and legal discovery.

Why Mormon Church Finances Matter

Most people don't understand what $250 billion means. The gap between a billion and a million is nearly impossible to visualize. To put it in concrete terms: the LDS Church's estimated wealth exceeds the gross domestic product of dozens of countries. It's roughly equivalent to the combined revenue of Apple and Microsoft. And yet, despite being one of the wealthiest religious organizations on the planet, the church publishes almost no audited financial statements and answers to no external oversight.

This matters for three reasons. First, the church collects this money through tithing, a religious obligation that the LDS faith teaches is spiritually necessary for salvation. Members often sacrifice real household needs based on their belief they must contribute 10% of their income to the church. Second, the church is incorporated as a charitable organization and enjoys substantial tax exemptions that cost taxpayers money. Third, as a closed institution, the church's financial practices raise hard questions about how donations are used and whether their scale is consistent with the church's charitable mission.