Comment by pjc50

.. and prior to the reformation, people would pay priests to pray to the saints to intercede on their behalf.

People got so upset about the Catholic church selling the right to bend the divine rules that one guy wrote an extremely angry listicle, made a viral post on a church door, and the rest is history. And centuries of sectarian warfare.

(Seriously, most of the 95 theses are about indulgences: https://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html )