In the Middle Ages, Montes Pietatius were charities created as an alternative to loan sharks and were started by Franciscans (St. Francis, 1209). These institutions of credit lent money to the poor at low rates of interest and were securitized by items left in pawn. The purpose of the charity was to protect the poor from usurers. Basically, the Franciscan’s were the Pope’s pawnbrokers, but later on, it would appear that this Order had a MISSION-DRIFT, one with a very nefarious agenda, and it would prove that the Papacy had the biggest balls of them all!
