ROME — Pope Francis is ending one of the less healthful perks of life in the Vatican: cheap cigarettes.

Selling discounted tobacco to employees and pensioners, without the increasingly stringent taxes imposed in surrounding Italy, has long been a source of revenue for the tiny Vatican City State. Many people in Rome have bought cigarettes through acquaintances at the Vatican.

But cigarette sales will be banned from next year, a Vatican spokesman announced on Thursday.

“The Holy See cannot contribute to an activity that clearly damages the health of people,” the spokesman, Greg Burke, said in a statement, citing World Health Organization figures that smoking causes seven million deaths a year.

The sales had been profitable for the Vatican, he said, but “no profit can be legitimate if it puts lives at risk.”