COMPAGNIA DI SAN PAOLO

COMPANY OF ST PAUL. – A pious institution, also called the Company of the Catholic Faith, founded in Turin on 25 January 1563 for the exercise of charity and the defence of religion. For more than three centuries it was the driving force behind the principal corporal and spiritual works of charity in the Savoyard capital, from the care of the sick to spiritual exercises and the operation of the Mount of Piety. Suppressed, or nearly so, during the Napoleonic period, it resumed its glorious religious and social traditions after the monarchical restoration of 1814. From 1853 onwards, as credit activity through the Mount of Piety gained ascendancy, it gradually transformed itself, while still maintaining extensive charitable work, into a banking institution, now of national character (1932), known by the name of “Istituto di S. Paolo.”