Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican 1850-1950

"Cambridge historian John Pollard, in his recent and superlative book, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican 1850-1950, has shown that the papacy as we know it, that is, an institution exercising universal jurisdiction over a global flock, is a distinctly modern creation whose contemporary clout is due in large part to two major developments in the last 150 years: the "Peter's Pence" fund, skillfully exploited to get donations sent directly to Rome; and the Lateran Treaty of 1929, which at a stroke wiped out the Vatican's debt and gave it the freedom to exist independently and thus appoint its own men everywhere -- even when there was no local threat requiring its outside intervention."