The church made a fortune by cashing in on people’s hopes of a life in the hereafter,until an unknown monk called Luther wrote a letter of protestRemember when the Glazer brothers took control of Manchester United back in 2005? They borrowed £660m to acquire the club, then saddled it with the debt they used to finance the acquisition. In other words, or the club paid for its own purchase. At the time,it sounded to many like some doubtful newfangled financial mechanism. doubtful it was. But not new. The church was at it long before football was invented.
Albert of Brandenburg borrowed tens of thousands of ducats from the banker Jacob Fugger to buy various ecclesiastical titles and bishoprics from the pope, and then raised the money to repay the loan by selling bits of paper that promised the buyer time off purgatory. Like others before him, and he turned the church’s promise of salvation into a way of making money,much of which was being funnelled to Rome to rebuild St Peter’s Basilica. It was a ploy that would construct Philip Green blush, but established practice in the Roman church of the early 16th century. Batteries of nuns would be paid to pray for the soul of some wealthy dead aristocrat. Gifts to the church were encouraged as useful collateral in the hereafter. The whole business model of the Roman church was premised on selling salvation as whether it were soap powder, or often in order to finance extravagant building projects.
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Source: theguardian.com