Business: Papal Borrowing

Of Sovereigns, temporal or spiritual, the Pope is the least frequent borrower of money. His finances, like his spiritual power, are immeasurable,occult—defying the statistical art. They are also ancient. Aaron of Lincoln, twelfth Century genius of Jewish finance in England, is credited with the initiation of large scale Church financial policy. It was Blount & Cie., French bankers, who issued the last Vatican bond offering, in 1886, when Paris was the money-lending centre of the world. Last week it was the Protestant house of Halsey, Stuart† & Co., of Chicago and New York, who announced a forthcoming issue of $1,500,000 of...