When a nearly 2,000-year old institution with more than a billion followers says that it wants to apply market-based solutions to solve the world’s most intractable problems, influential leaders are bound to take notice.
That will indeed be the case next week when leaders from global business, finance and civil society flock to Rome for a summit convened by the Vatican that aims to deepen the Catholic Church’s role in impact investing.
The financial discipline of deploying private, profit-seeking capital to tackle challenges of global sustainability has been a growing trend in recent years and has drawn resources and funding from some of the world’s largest banks and foundations. Last year impact investors committed $15.2 billion, bringing the total amount of impact investing assets under management, by respondents in the Global Impact Investing Network’s 2016 annual impact investing survey, to $77.4 billion.
About the author
Naki B. Mendozamfbmendoza
Naki is a former reporter, he covered the intersection of business and international development. Prior to Devex he was a Latin America reporter for Energy Intelligence covering corporate investments and political risks in the region’s energy sector. His previous assignments abroad have posted him throughout Europe, South America, and Australia.
