Sell the Vatican to feel the poor?

There is a pretty good Anthony Quinn movie from years ago called "Shoes of the Fisherman" in which a reform-minded bishop - perhaps somewhat similar to Pope Francis, actually - gets elected pope.  To help stop a famine in China that could lead to a major war, he calls upon the world's people to give generously to provide food for the Chinese, even pledging to sell off the art and architectural treasures of the Vatican if need be.
  
Maybe people have that movie in mind when they visit the Vatican today and make comments like, "Just look at all this gold-gilded opulence; just imagine how many poor people could have been helped with all that money."  I admit that I felt some ambivalence visiting St. Peters, not because it was glorious, but because I knew that it was funded, in part, through the sale of indulgences - a corrupt practice that actually was the catalyst of the Protestant Reformation and the shattering of Western Christendom. 
    
Here is another great video from Brian Holdsworth: he heard comments like that ("Why not sell the Vatican to feed the world?") when he visited Rome, and moves beyond the surface level moralism (even sanctimony) to think through the actual implications of what that means, showing just how short-sighted this sentiment actually is.