Dial-the-Pope Starts to Help Vatican With Deficit : Fund raising: Callers can hear taped messages from the pontiff by dialing 900 number. Vatican could gross $2.8 million per week from ‘electronic collection plate.’

Call the Pope on the telephone and help the Catholic Church close its $90-million budget deficit by using a service dubbed “the world’s first electronic collection plate.”

Since Monday, AT&T; and Global Telecom, a London-based telecommunications company representing the Holy See, have established a 900 telephone number in the United States on which callers can hear a daily message from Pope John Paul II. The cost is $1.95 per minute.

Michael Fahringer, a Global Telecom senior executive, predicts that the service, eventually to be set up worldwide, could generate $1.4 million per week for Vatican coffers--and that’s just from U.S. callers.

The call plugs into taped papal messages, which last two to three minutes and are taken from Pope John Paul speaking on various religious themes in English at his weekly general audience. The first message talks of the importance of the Holy Spirit in guiding the church.

U.S. callers dial 1-900-740-POPE to hear the message.

There are more than 70 million Catholics in the United States. If 1% call the number only once a week, that would mean 700,000 calls, said Fahringer, who came up with the description of the service as an “electronic collection plate.”

Fahringer said “a conservative estimate” would mean that each call costs $4, and because AT&T; returns profits to the business that generates the calls, the Vatican could do gross business of $2.8 million per week.

He said he expects net profits to the Vatican to amount to 30% to 50% of the gross business.

The Vatican began running huge deficits in the 1980s, so Fahringer and his London partner, Stan Markland, who set up premium telephone lines for British Telecom, contacted a Vatican office called Peter’s Pence, which is in charge of an annual worldwide collection taken up for the Pope.

Previously used for missions and other charities, Peter’s Pence now is used to help offset the church deficit.

But, said Fahringer, “If you’ve been to a service, you see that people just throw in pocket change.” He thought a more substantial, steady contribution might be garnered from paid telephone calls. Global Telecom had been testing the service for several months before establishing it here.

The Vatican had established a telephone number through Intel in Italy, but profits from such calls went only to the telephone carriers, said Fahringer. “I knew that people could call the Vatican radio in Italy and hear the message, but it was difficult to access, expensive and, most importantly, none of the money went to the Holy See to support the Pope and his apostolic mission.”

A similar service has been instituted in Britain, Ireland, and a world service is operated through Sydney, Australia, and the Overseas Telephone Co. A Spanish-language message from the Pope will be started next.