Public pawnshops or Monti di pietà numbered 555 in 1896, with a net patrimony of £2,879,625. In that year their income, including revenue from capital, was £416,385, and their expenditure £300,232. The amount lent on security was £4,153,229.
The Monti frumentarii or co-operative corn deposits, which lend seed corn to farmers, and are repaid after harvest with interest in kind, numbered 1615 in 1894, and possessed a patrimony of £240,000.
In addition to the regular charitable institutions, the communal and provincial authorities exercise charity, the former (in 1899) to the extent of £1,827,166 and the latter to the extent of £919,832 per annum. Part of these sums is given to hospitals, and part spent directly by the communal and provincial authorities. Of the sum spent by the communes, about ½ goes for the sanitary service (doctors, midwives, vaccination), 1⁄8 for the maintenance of foundlings, 1⁄10 for the support of the sick in hospitals, and 1⁄22 for sheltering the aged and needy. Of the sum spent by the provincial authorities, over half goes to lunatic asylums and over a quarter to the maintenance of foundling hospitals.
Religion.—The great majority of Italians—97.12%—are Roman Catholics. Besides the ordinary Latin rite, several others are recognized. The Armenians of Venice maintain their traditional characteristics. The Albanians of the southern provinces still employ the Greek rite and the Greek language in their public worship, and their priests, like those of the Greek Church, are allowed to marry. Certain peculiarities introduced by St Ambrose distinguish the ritual of Milan from that of the general church. Up to 1871 the island of Sicily was, according to the bull of Urban II., ecclesiastically dependent on the king, and exempt from the canonical power of the pope.
Though the territorial authority of the papal see was practically abolished in 1870, the fact that Rome is the seat of the administrative centre of the vast organization of the church is not without significance to the nation. In the same city in which the administrative functions of the body politic are centralized there still exists the court of the spiritual potentate which in 1879 consisted of 1821 persons. Protestants number some 65,000, of whom half are Italian and half foreign. Of the former 22,500 are Waldensians. The number of Jews was returned as 36,000, but is certainly higher. There are, besides, in Italy some 2500 members of the Greek Orthodox Church. There were in 1901 20,707 parishes in Italy, 68,444 secular clergy and 48,043 regulars (monks, lay brothers and nuns). The size of parishes varies from province to province, Sicily having larger parishes in virtue of the old Sicilian church laws, and Naples, and some parts of central Italy, having the smallest. The Italian parishes had in 1901 a total gross revenue, including assignments from the public worship endowment fund, of £1,280,000 or an average of £63 per parish; 51% of this gross sum consists of revenue from glebe lands.
The kingdom is divided into 264 sees and ten abbeys, or prelatures nullius dioceseos. The dioceses are as follows:—
A. 6 suburbicarian sees—Ostia and Velletri, Porto and Sta Rufina, Albano, Frascati, Palestrina, Sabina—all held by cardinal bishops.
B. 74 sees immediately subject to the Holy See, of which 12 are archiepiscopal and 61 episcopal.
C. 37 ecclesiastical provinces, each under a metropolitan, composed of 148 suffragan dioceses. Their position is indicated in the following table:—
| Metropolitans. | Suffragans. |
| Acerenza-Matera | Anglona-Tursi, Tricarico, Venosa. |
| Bari | Conversano, Ruvo-Bitonto. |
| Benevento | S. Agata de’ Goti, Alife, Ariano, Ascoli Satriano Cerignola, Avellino, Bojano, Bovino, Larino, Lucera, S. Severo, Telese (Cerreto), Termoli. |
| Bologna | Faenza, Imola. |
| Brindisi and Ostuni | No suffragan. |
| Cagliari | Galtelli-Nuoro, Iglesias, Ogliastra. |
| Capua | Caiazzo, Calvi-Teano, Caserta, Isernia-Venafro, Sessa. |
| Chieti and Vasto | No suffragan. |
| Conza and Campagna | S. Angelo de’ Lombardi-Bisaccia, Lacedonia, Muro Lucano. |
| Fermo | Macerata-Tolentino, Montalto, Ripatransone, S. Severino. |
| Florence | Borgo S. Sepolcro, Colle di Val d’Elsa, Fiesole, S. Miniato, Modigliana, Pistoia-Prato. |
| Genoa | Albenga, Bobbio, Chiavari, Savona-Noli, Tortona, Ventimiglia. |
| Lanciano and Ortona | No suffragan. |
| Manfredonia and Viesti | No suffragan. |
| Messina | Lipari, Nicosia, Patti. |
| Milan | Bergamo, Brescia, Como, Crema, Cremona, Lodi, Mantua, Pavia. |
| Modena | Carpi, Guastalla, Massa-Carrara, Reggio. |
| Monreale | Caltanisetta, Girgenti. |
| Naples | Acerra, Ischia, Nola, Pozzuoli. |
| Oristano | Ales-Terralba. |
| Otranto | Gallipoli, Lecce, Ugento. |
| Palermo | Cefalù, Mazzara, Trapani. |
| Pisa | Leghorn, Pescia, Pontremoli, Volterra. |
| Ravenna | Bertinoro, Cervia, Cesena, Comacchio, Forlì, Rimini, Sarsina. |
| Reggio Calabria | Bova, Cassano, Catanzaro, Cotrone, Gerace, Nicastro, Oppido, Nicotera-Tropea, Squillace. |
| Salerno | Acerno, Capaccio-Vallo, Diano, Marsico-Nuovo and Potenza, Nocera dei Pagani, Nusco, Policastro. |
| Sassari | Alghero, Ampurias and Tempio, Bisarhio, Bosa. |
| S. Severino | Cariati. |
| Siena | Chiusi-Pienza, Grosseto, Massa Marittima, Sovana-Pitigliano. |
| Syracuse | Caltagirone, Noto, Piazza-Armerina. |
| Sorrento | Castellammare. |
| Taranto | Castellaneta, Oria. |
| Trani-Nazareth-Barletta, Bisceglie | Andria. |
| Turin | Acqui, Alba, Aosta, Asti, Cuneo, Fossano, Ivrea, Mondovi, Pinerolo, Saluzzo, Susa. |
| Urbino | S. Angelo in Vado-Urbania, Cagli-Pergola, Fossombrone, Montefeltro, Pesaro, Sinigaglia. |
| Venice (patriarch) | Adria, Belluno-Feltre, Ceneda (Vittorio), Chioggia, Concordia-Portogruaro, Padua, Treviso, Verona, Vicenza. |
| Vercelli | Alessandria della Paglia, Biella, Casale, Monferrato, Novara, Vigevano. |