Open Questions

Open Saint Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Necropolis

Why It Is Open The Holy See has released whole-institution budget and balance sheet figures since October 2020, but the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the historic office administering Saint Peter's Basilica since the sixteenth century, has never published a figure isolated to the Basilica's own income, offerings, or the Fabbrica's own maintenance and construction fund.

What Would Settle It A future Vatican financial disclosure that itemizes the Fabbrica di San Pietro's own accounts separately from the Holy See's consolidated statement, or a leaked or independently audited figure for the Basilica's own finances.

Expertise Needed Vatican financial administration and canon law, and investigative or financial journalism covering the Holy See.

Question posed in Vatican Releases Budget, Balance Sheet Amid Financial Scandal (Associated Press via Al Jazeera, 2020), The Associated Press.

Open Masjid al-Haram and the Kaaba

Why It Is Open The authority overseeing the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah was declared financially independent by Saudi royal decree in August 2023, but no annual budget or operating figure for the authority has been published; the kingdom's national budget statements do not break out its spending as a line item, and reporting instead announces individual infrastructure projects by their own cost.

What Would Settle It A published annual report or budget statement from the General Authority for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque itself, or a Saudi state budget breakdown that discloses the authority's allocation as its own line item.

Expertise Needed Public finance and religious administration in Saudi Arabia, and Middle East-focused financial journalism.

Question posed in Saudi Arabia Establishes New Independent Body to Supervise Affairs of Two Holy Mosques (Gulf News, 2023), Khitam Al Amir.

Open Westminster Abbey

Why It Is Open Westminster Abbey, as a Royal Peculiar, is exempt from registering with the Charity Commission for England and Wales the way Canterbury Cathedral and other great English churches with registered charity status are, so no audited public accounts for it exist on the Commission's register. It self-publishes an annual report stating only an aggregate running cost, not a total income figure broken down by source, and this pass could not extract one from the report's own document.

What Would Settle It A direct, text-readable reading of Westminster Abbey's own annual report and accounts, which the Abbey publishes as a PDF each year, isolating a total income or total funds figure and its breakdown by source.

Expertise Needed UK ecclesiastical and charity law, and nonprofit financial reporting.

Question posed in Support Us (Westminster Abbey Official Website).

Open Guruvayur

Why It Is Open A Kerala High Court division bench found in July 2026 that Guruvayur Devaswom's annual accounts for the 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 financial years had not been finalized or filed for statutory audit, that no physical verification of its gold and silver offerings had occurred in 43 years, and that auditors had been denied the digital access needed to check its online transactions, so no current total income or revenue figure for the Devaswom could be confirmed.

What Would Settle It The finalized, audited annual accounts of Guruvayur Devaswom for 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26, once filed and made public in compliance with the Kerala High Court's July 2026 order, or independent reporting that reads them once they exist.

Expertise Needed Kerala Devaswom administration and public finance, and investigative or legal journalism covering religious endowment governance in Kerala.

Question posed in Kerala High Court Issues Directions To Strengthen Audit, Financial Transparency In Guruvayur Devaswom (LiveLaw, 2026), K. Salma Jennath.

Open Meenakshi Amman Temple

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Meenakshi Amman Temple's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it; the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue, and a Madras High Court order in September 2025 had to compel the department to produce the temple's own revenue and property details, which were not already public.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Meenakshi Amman Temple specifically, or the department's compliance with the Madras High Court's September 2025 disclosure order once it is filed and made public.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Madras High Court Seeks Full Details of Meenakshi Temple Properties, Revenue and Encroachments (LawBeat, 2025), Salil Tiwari.

Open Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangam's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it, and the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue across its properties generally.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Ranganathaswamy Temple specifically, naming its own audited revenue apart from the department's consolidated figures.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Tamil Nadu: CAG Slams HR&CE Department for Non-Cooperation in Temple Assets Audit (Organiser, 2024), TS Venkatesan.

Open Brihadishvara Temple

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Brihadishvara Temple's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it, and the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue across its properties generally.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Brihadishvara Temple specifically, naming its own audited revenue apart from the department's consolidated figures.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Tamil Nadu: CAG Slams HR&CE Department for Non-Cooperation in Temple Assets Audit (Organiser, 2024), TS Venkatesan.

Open Ise Grand Shrine

Why It Is Open Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts income associated with worship from both taxation and standing financial disclosure, and Shinto shrines including Ise Grand Shrine generally do not publish their offering income; the only widely reported figure, about 57 billion yen, is a one-time capital fundraising total for the shrine's periodic rebuilding, not an annual income or budget figure.

What Would Settle It A change in Japanese religious corporation disclosure requirements, or a voluntary published account from the Jingu Administration Office naming Ise Grand Shrine's own annual offering income or operating budget.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and financial or investigative journalism covering Japan's religious institutions.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Meiji Shrine

Why It Is Open The only widely circulated figure for Meiji Shrine, an estimated 1.3 billion yen over the three-day New Year holiday, comes from an outside estimator rather than the shrine's own published accounts and covers only that three-day window; Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts worship-related income from the disclosure that would otherwise make a fuller, annual figure available.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published account from Meiji Shrine's own administration naming its annual offering income or operating budget, or a change in Japanese religious corporation disclosure requirements.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and financial or investigative journalism covering Japan's religious institutions.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Yasukuni Shrine

Why It Is Open Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts income associated with worship from taxation and standing financial disclosure, and no figure for Yasukuni Shrine's own annual income or operating budget was located despite the shrine's unusual level of political and journalistic scrutiny on other matters.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published account from Yasukuni Shrine's own administration naming its annual offering income or operating budget, or investigative reporting that obtains one despite the general non-disclosure norm.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and investigative or political journalism covering Yasukuni Shrine specifically.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Chachapoya

Why It Is Open The Chachapoya left no deciphered writing system, and Spanish chroniclers who might have recorded their beliefs encountered them only after Inca conquest had already reshaped their political and religious institutions in the late fifteenth century. Their monumental architecture, sarcophagi and mummy bundles are extensively documented archaeologically, but the specific deities, cosmology and ritual meaning behind that material record are not confidently known from any surviving account.

What Would Settle It Further bioarchaeological and iconographic study of undisturbed Chachapoya funerary sites, such as the Laguna de los Condores mausoleums, that could recover painted or carved religious imagery predating Inca influence, together with any Chachapoya-specific vocabulary that might survive embedded in later colonial-era Quechua or Spanish records of the region.

Expertise Needed Andean archaeology and bioarchaeology

Question posed in Chachapoyas: Cultural Development at an Andean Cloud Forest Crossroads (Church and von Hagen), Warren B. Church and Adriana von Hagen.

Open Nazca

Why It Is Open The Nazca (about 100 BCE to 800 CE) left no writing system, so no text records their own speech. The Quechua and Aymara families dominant on the Peruvian south coast today arrived through Inca imperial expansion in the fifteenth century and Spanish colonial administration afterward, six hundred years or more after Nazca civilization had already ended, so their modern presence cannot be read backward onto the Nazca population. Scholarship on Andean historical linguistics treats a Quechuan or Aymaran tie for the pre-Inca south coast cultures as speculative, resting on colonial-era impressions of multilingualism that may equally reflect internal variation within those two families elsewhere in the Andes.

What Would Settle It A securely dated Nazca-period inscription would settle it outright, but none has been found and the culture is understood to have had no writing system at all. Short of that, a documented layer of loanwords or toponyms in a later, attested language that can be traced specifically and exclusively to the pre-Inca Rio Grande de Nasca drainage, rather than to the wider post-Inca Quechua-speaking Andes, would be evidence a historical linguist could evaluate.

Expertise Needed Historical linguistics, archaeology

Question posed in The Languages of the Andes, Willem F. H. Adelaar with Pieter C. Muysken.

Open Americas

Why It Is Open Ptolemy's four quarters divide only the oikoumene, the inhabited world known in the second century, and the western hemisphere lies wholly outside it. No quarter, triplicity or planetary co-ruler was ever assigned to the Americas by the tradition that built the scheme, and nothing proposed since has acquired comparable standing. This is not a lost passage or a disputed reading; it is an absence created by the geographic horizon of the source.

What Would Settle It A survey of the mundane astrological literature from the sixteenth century onward, when the Americas entered European awareness, establishing whether any author extended the chorography to the new hemisphere, on what reasoning, and whether the extension was taken up by anyone else. A negative result would settle the entry as firmly as a positive one, and either way the entry ceases to be an open absence.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; early modern intellectual history; history of geographic knowledge

Question posed in A History of Western Astrology, Nicholas Campion.

Open Turkey

Why It Is Open Turkish national censuses do not ask about sectarian or Alevi religious identity, so no official count of the Alevi population exists. Published estimates commonly range from about 10 to 20 percent of the population, a spread wide enough to reflect the absence of a count rather than disagreement over one.

What Would Settle It A nationally representative census or independently conducted survey that specifically asks about Alevi self-identification, which the Turkish state census currently does not do.

Expertise Needed Demography, religious studies

Question posed in Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, Pew Research Center.

Open Syria

Why It Is Open The last widely cited figures, about 74 percent Sunni Muslim, 11 percent Alawite, 10 percent Christian, describe the pre-2011 population. A decade of civil war, mass displacement and emigration has since altered the population in ways no subsequent census or survey has measured, so the current composition is not known.

What Would Settle It A new nationally representative census or demographic survey conducted once conditions allow it, accounting for returnees, refugees and the dead.

Expertise Needed Demography

Question posed in Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, Pew Research Center.

Open Lebanon

Why It Is Open No official religious census has been taken in Lebanon since 1932, by policy, to avoid disturbing the sectarian power-sharing arrangement fixed at that count. Every percentage in circulation, including the estimate recorded here, is a modeled estimate rather than a count.

What Would Settle It An official national census that asks and records sectarian religious affiliation, which Lebanese governments have avoided for over ninety years for the same political reason the number stays unknown.

Expertise Needed Demography, political science

Question posed in Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, Pew Research Center.

Open Sri Dalada Maligawa

Why It Is Open The temple permits only devotional access. No independent scientific examination of the relic has ever been permitted, so authenticity rests on transmitted tradition alone.

What Would Settle It Non-destructive material analysis of the relic, such as micro-CT or isotopic testing, if the temple ever permitted an outside examination.

Expertise Needed Archaeometry, Buddhist studies

Question posed in Sri Dalada Maligawa (institutional record).

Open Perth Museum (Culture Perth and Kinross)

Why It Is Open No documentary or physical evidence has ever settled whether monks at Scone hid the genuine stone and gave Edward I a substitute in 1296. The question has never been resolved.

What Would Settle It Discovery of a contemporary thirteenth or fourteenth century record describing the 1296 removal in enough detail to confirm or rule out a substitution, or a comparative petrological study against any stone independently documented as being at Scone before 1296.

Expertise Needed Medieval history, geology

Question posed in Perth Museum (institutional record).

Open Amarnath Cave

Why It Is Open The cave is named in the Nilamata Purana and in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, but neither text's date of composition is settled, so their references cannot fix how far back the site's veneration actually runs.

What Would Settle It A codicological or paleographic dating study of the manuscript traditions of the Nilamata Purana and the Rajatarangini, or an independently dated inscription or record naming the cave before the nineteenth century.

Expertise Needed Indology, manuscript studies, Sanskrit philology

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.).

Open Al-Azhar

Why It Is Open Al-Azhar's waqf endowments were nationalized into Egypt's Ministry of Awqaf in 1952; the Ministry administers the national waqf estate as a whole and no source found in this pass isolates Al-Azhar's own share of it, so no current valuation of Al-Azhar's institutional wealth can be attested.

What Would Settle It A Ministry of Awqaf or Egyptian government disclosure, or an independent scholarly study of Egypt's waqf sector, that breaks out Al-Azhar's own endowment holdings from the national total.

Expertise Needed Islamic economics / Egyptian public administration

Question posed in Al-Azhar Mosque (Wikipedia), Article body, history section, on the 1952 nationalization of Al-Azhar's waqfs.