Vatican City

Type of Government

The State of the Vatican City is an absolute monarchy, with the Roman Catholic pope having full executive, judicial, and legislative power. The pope is elected for a life term by the College of Cardinals and is supported in his executive duties by a secular governor and council—both of whom are appointed by the pope—and legislatively by the College of Cardinals. The judicial system adheres to canon law—the legal code used in courts of the Roman Catholic Church.

Background

Vatican City lies within the boundaries of Rome and is the smallest independent state in the world at about 110 square acres. The Vatican’s territory includes St. Peter’s Square, St. Peter’s Basilica (the world’s largest church), an enclave of administrative buildings, Belvedere Park, the papal palaces (the Vatican proper), and the Vatican Garden. The Vatican also administers a number of churches and properties in Rome and other parts of Italy.

The current Vatican City is the last remaining sovereign territory of the Papal States—the territories held by the Roman Catholic Church—that had their roots as part of the Byzantine Empire of the sixth century AD and at one time included much of the peninsula of Italy. For centuries the region was overrun and controlled by several empires, with much confusion over the extent of papal authority. Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel II (1820–1878) seized the Papal States in 1860 in a campaign to unify Italy. Victor Emmanuel captured Rome itself in 1870 and declared it the new capital of Italy, ending papal claims to secular authority. He confined the papacy to the Vatican and Lateran palaces in Rome and the villa of Castel Gandolfo. Pope Pius IX (1846–1878) and his successors refused to recognize the legitimacy of these events and proclaimed themselves prisoners in the Vatican.

In 1929 the Italian government and the Holy See (the seat of the Bishop of Rome, or pope) signed the Lateran Treaty, which finally resolved the question of papal dominion. The treaty recognized the Holy See’s independence and sovereignty, created the State of the Vatican City, and defined its territory; established the Roman Catholic Church as the state church of Italy; and paid the Holy See compensation for the losses it incurred in the 1870 takeover.

Government Structure

The pope has unconditional executive, legislative, and judicial power in both Vatican City and the Roman Catholic Church. The pope delegates the City’s internal administration to the Pontifical Commission for the State of the Vatican City, assisted by the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic City. The Pontifical Committee consists of seven cardinals and a special lay delegate, supported by a board of twenty-one lay advisors. The major government officials, other than the pope, are the secretary of state and the secretary of the Sacred Council for Public Affairs.

The College of Cardinals elects the pope from its membership with a two-thirds vote. The pope appoints the cardinals; their number varies from one pope to the next. In 2007 the college had 184 members from sixty-eight countries.

Most of the Vatican government ’s work serves the needs of the Catholic Church. The Roman Curia (Vatican City’s administrative organ) and the Papal Civil Service conduct religious affairs under the pope’s direction. The Roman Curia includes a secretariat of state, nine sacred councils, three tribunals, and eleven pontifical councils. The secretariat of state directs the Curia under the leadership of a cardinal, who is secretary of state and serves a five-year term. The more important sacred councils include the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which oversees church doctrine; the Congregation for Bishops, which organizes the appointment of bishops throughout the world; and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which administers all missionary activities.

The Vatican Courts have jurisdiction over their internal legal affairs. The Vatican has three tribunals for religious cases. The Apostolic Penitentiary addresses questions concerning penance and absolution from sin. The Roman Rota deals mostly with marriage-related issues but also handles appeals based on lower ecclesiastical court decisions. The Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature is the highest court of appeals.

The Prefecture for Economic Affairs oversees finances for the Holy See, including administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, an investment fund that began at the time of the Lateran agreements. A committee of fifteen cardinals has final authority over Holy See finances, including the Vatican Bank (the Institute for Works of Religion). The Vatican administers industrial, real estate, and artistic assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Internationally, Vatican City maintains a strong presence, both politically and spiritually. The Lateran Treaty gave Vatican City the right to have diplomatic ties to other countries, but it also mandated an official position of neutrality in armed conflicts. The Vatican’s moral stature, however, allows it to voice its concerns over war-related human rights violations and to intervene diplomatically if necessary.

Major Events

In 1947 the Italian Republic’s constitution largely affirmed the Lateran Treaty of 1929. The Vatican signed a new concordat with the Italian government in 1984 that continued papal authority in Vatican City but ended Roman Catholicism’s status as Italy’s state religion.

The most significant event for the Vatican and the Church in the twentieth century was Pope John XXIII’s (1881–1963), and his successor, Pope Paul VI’s (1897–1978), 1962 Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican (Vatican II). The Council was the first worldwide Roman Catholic meeting in nearly a century. It modernized church doctrine in both the spiritual and social realms, perhaps most importantly—and controversially—permitting the Catholic Mass to be performed in languages other than Latin.

In 1978 the Vatican achieved another first when the College of Cardinals elected the first non-Italian pope in 450 years. The Polish Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) traveled widely, increasing the visible influence of the Church in international affairs. He tried to build bridges to the Muslim world and was a strong advocate of human rights and the peaceful resolution of world problems. His political influence is credited with accelerating the fall of communism in Poland and other Soviet satellite countries.

Twenty-First Century

One of Pope John Paul II’s most distinctive legacies is the diplomatic role he played during his tenure as head of the Vatican. An outspoken advocate of negotiation and disarmament, John Paul met often with world leaders to attempt to sway them toward peaceful resolutions; in such situations as the genocides in Rwanda and Kosovo in the 1990s, Vatican City was instrumental in bringing the atrocities to public awareness. In 1998 John Paul made an attempt at reconciliation with Jews when he issued a papal encyclical apologizing for the role many European Catholics had played in not offering protection to Jews during the Nazi persecution and Holocaust. Similarly, in December 2002 the Vatican made a gesture to heal relations with Judaism, opening for the first time its archives on Nazi Germany. While this move was not a formal apology for what many have viewed as the Church’s complicity during the Holocaust, it did provide scholars and critics with a rare look into the processes that determined Church policy at the time.

In January 2002 John Paul called on religious leaders from around the world to join him at a peace summit in Assisi, Italy, addressing the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. More than 200 representatives of Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy attended.

German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (1927–) was elected pope in April 2005, taking the name Benedict XVI. Known as a hard-line doctrinal conservative, Benedict almost immediately courted controversy when newspapers reported that he had briefly been a member of the Nazi organization Hitler Youth as a teenager. Many—including Jewish groups—pointed out, however, that such membership had been common and at times obligatory for young people living in Nazi Germany, and the incident was quickly forgotten.

In September 2006 Benedict again put the Vatican in an awkward situation when he quoted medieval texts that referred to Islam as “evil” and “inhuman” in a speech, antagonizing the Muslim world and sparking attacks on churches and the murder of a Catholic nun in Somalia. This came several months after the pope had removed the head of the Vatican’s council on Christian-Islamic relations and merged the group into the ministry of culture, effectively downgrading the Church’s approach to building diplomatic ties with the Muslim world. In May 2007 the pope restored the department—called the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue—to its former stature, indicating that the Vatican intends to pursue a policy of greater engagement with Islam.

As of 2007, the Holy See maintained diplomatic relations with 174 countries and the European Union (EU). It was a permanent observer at the United Nations, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, and International Labor Organization, among others.

Mcdowell, Bart, and James Stanfield. Inside the Vatican. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2005.

O’Collins, Gerald. Living Vatican II: The 21st Council for the 21st Century. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2006.

Reese, Thomas J. Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.