What Tetzel did was not authorized by the pope and constituted the canonical crime of simony. But again, Luther went beyond just objecting to abuse; the Reformation was a wholesale rejection of Church teaching.
Meaning Leo X granted a plenary indulgence , the remission of all temporal punishment for all sins, such as would voluntarily contribute to the building of the church St. Peter (who at one time lived in a house of a tanner by the sea), but with half of the money being for Bishop Albrecht von Mainz, the authorized papal agent for the indulgence granted by the papal Bull Sacrosanctis salvatoris et redemptoris, to repay money loaned him from an Augsburg banker in order to illegally obtain pastoral office. As Jedin affirms , "the whole thing was a full-fledged scandal."
For as the Catholic Encyclopedia (in its entry on Leo X) affirms
...the seeds of discontent amid which Luther threw his firebrand had been germinating for centuries. The immediate cause was bound up with the odious greed for money displayed by the Roman Curia, and shows how far short all efforts at reform had hitherto fallen. Albert of Brandenburg, already Archbishop of Magdeburg, received in addition the Archbishopric of Mainz and the Bishopric of Hallerstadt, but in return was obliged to collect 10,000 ducats, which he was taxed over and above the usual confirmation fees. To indemnify him, and to make it possible to discharge these obligations Rome permitted him to have preached in his territory the plenary indulgence promised all those who contributed to the new St. Peter's; he was allowed to keep one half the returns, a transaction which brought dishonour on all concerned in it.
and constituted the canonical crime of simony.
Wrong again. Consistent with the principles of Catholic theology, receiving a confession certificate by in response to a donation by which one could obtain an indulgence for the remission of all temporal punishment for all sins, but which required penitent confession to any priest at any desired time in his later life, is not the same thing as for simony. For an indulgence requires acts of devotion along with penitent heart, whereas a church office not only requires qualifications beyond that, but simony is a form of barter, that the office being made equal to the value of money, and which the selling of indulgences became reduced to.
The Catholic Encyclopedia states , "jubilees and indulgences were degraded almost entirely into financial transactions."
Yet it is affirmed that "alms deeds" "being prescribed in the granting of an indulgence," and that "among the good works which might be encouraged by being made the condition of an indulgence, alms giving would naturally hold a conspicuous place." (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm) Which did lead to abuses, as were other things, but not that alms giving for an indulgence was itself an abuse in the RC $ystem.
Therefore among the good works encouraged by being made the condition of an indulgence, "alms giving would naturally hold a conspicuous place" in the time of Tetzel, as long as the condition of confession with a contrite (which is only presumed) heart be adhered to. And thus the CE states that Tetzel's error was preaching "plenary indulgence for the dead on the mere gift of money, without contrition on the part of the giver."
However, since what was actually given in response to a donation was a confession certificate, which required penitent confession to any priest at any desired time in his later life in order to receive the indulgence, then technically it is asserted that Rome never authorized the actual sale of indulgences. Meaning that Rome sold a conditional promise of remission of the temporal punishment due to sin.
For support of just indulgences for the dead then from many old sources as here we have this quote from Leo X, "that the dead and the living who truly obtain these indulgences, are immediately freed from the punishment due to their actual sins according to Divine justice, which allows these indulgences to be granted and obtained. "
Now you are better informed at least.
Yet another falsehood! "A wholesale rejection of Church teaching," yet that was not the charge against him (and certainly the 95 thesis), and the followers he inspired became foremost defenders of the many many core Truths we both agree on, versus distinctive Catholic teachings that are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed. Some of which Luther himself yet held to.