The Vatican Bank launched two new equity benchmarks on Tuesday that pick investments based on Catholic principles.

The indexes, titled 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, or IOR, the formal name for the Vatican's primary financial institution.

Each index includes 50 medium- and large-cap companies that align with the institute's approach to ethical Catholic investing. The Vatican's indexes join a crowded field of so-called ESG funds, or those that invest according to environmental, social or governance-based guidelines.

The Vatican Bank said it is launching the new indexes in partnership with Morningstar, a Chicago-based financial services firm. 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.

The top components in the U.S. Catholic index include Meta and Amazon.com, while Dutch chip equipment maker ASML Holding and Germany's Deutsche Telekom are the top companies for the Eurozone index, according to fact sheets from Morningstar.

An IOR spokesperson said the companies included in the index must meet certain criteria in accordance with the group's investment policies, such as its stances on the sanctity of human life, environmental protection and financial corruption.

The indexes come more than a decade after S&P Dow Jones Indices 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.

Catholics constitute the largest religious group in the U.S., with more than 50 million Catholic adults nationwide, according to Pew Research.

Source