Lateran Treaty

The Lateran Pacts are often presented as three treaties: a 27-article treaty of conciliation, a three-article financial convention, and a 45-article concordat.[4] However, the website of the Holy See presents the financial convention as an annex of the treaty of conciliation, considering the pacts as two documents:[5]

• A political treaty recognising the full sovereignty of the Holy See in the State of Vatican City, which was thereby established, accompanied by four annexes:
  • A map of the territory of Vatican City State
  • Maps of buildings with extraterritorial privilege and exemption from expropriation and taxes (owned by the Holy See but located in Italy and not forming part of Vatican City)
  • Maps of buildings with exemption from expropriation and taxes (but without extraterritorial privilege)
  • A financial convention agreed on as a definitive settlement of the claims of the Holy See following the loss in 1870 of its territories and property[lower-alpha 1]
• A concordat regulating relations between the Catholic Church and the Italian state

Francesco Pacelli was the right-hand man to Pietro Gasparri during the Lateran Treaty negotiations

Territory of Vatican City State, established by the Lateran Accords

2013 map of Vatican City

During the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century, the Papal States resisted incorporation into the new nation, even as all the other Italian countries, except for San Marino, joined it; Camillo Cavour's dream of proclaiming the Kingdom of Italy from the steps of St. Peter's Basilica did not come to pass. The nascent Kingdom of Italy invaded and occupied Romagna (the eastern portion of the Papal States) in 1860, leaving only Latium in the pope's domains. Latium, including Rome itself, was occupied and annexed in 1870. For the following sixty years, relations between the Papacy and the Italian government were hostile, and the status of the pope became known as the "Roman Question".

The Popes knew that Rome was irrevocably the capital of Italy. There was nothing they wanted less than to govern it or be burdened with a papal kingdom. What they wished was independence, a foothold on the earth that belonged to no other sovereign.[7]

Negotiations for the settlement of the Roman Question began in 1926 between the government of Italy and the Holy See, and culminated in the agreements of the Lateran Pacts, signed—the Treaty says—for King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and for Pope Pius XI by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri,[8] on 11 February 1929.[9] It was ratified on 7 June 1929.[10]

The agreements included a political treaty which created the state of the Vatican City and guaranteed full and independent sovereignty to the Holy See. The Pope was pledged to perpetual neutrality in international relations and to abstention from mediation in a controversy unless specifically requested by all parties. In the first article of the treaty, Italy reaffirmed the principle established in the 1848 Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, that "the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Religion is the only religion of the State".[11] The attached financial agreement was accepted as settlement of all the claims of the Holy See against Italy arising from the loss of temporal power of the Papal States in 1870.

The sum thereby given to the Holy See was actually less than Italy declared it would pay under the terms of the Law of Guarantees of 1871, by which the Italian government guaranteed to Pope Pius IX and his successors the use of, but not sovereignty over, the Vatican and Lateran Palaces and a yearly income of Lire 3,250,000 as indemnity for the loss of sovereignty and territory. The Holy See, on the grounds of the need for clearly manifested independence from any political power in its exercise of spiritual jurisdiction, had refused to accept the settlement offered in 1871, and the popes thereafter until the signing of the Lateran Treaty considered themselves prisoners in the Vatican, a small, limited area inside Rome.

To commemorate the successful conclusion of the negotiations, Mussolini commissioned the Via della Conciliazione (Road of the Conciliation), which would symbolically link the Vatican City to the heart of Rome.

Italy's anti-Jewish laws of 1938 prohibited marriages between Jews and non-Jews, including Catholics: the Vatican viewed this as a violation of the Concordat, which gave the church the sole right to regulate marriages involving Catholics.[18] Further, Article 34 of the Concordat had also specified that marriages performed by the Catholic Church would always be considered valid by civil authorities: [19] the Holy See understood this to apply to all marriages in Italy celebrated by Roman Catholic clergy, regardless of the faiths of those being married.[19]

• Concordat
• Law of Guarantees
• List of sovereigns of the Vatican City State
• Index of Vatican City-related articles
• Properties of the Holy See
• Roman Question
• Reichskonkordat, treaty between the Holy See and Nazi Germany
• Religion in Italy

Archival sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lateran Treaty.

• Text of the Lateran Treaty (English translation)
• Text of the Lateran Pacts, including the financial convention and the concordat (original Italian)
• Italian law executing the Lateran Pacts, with the text and annexed maps (original Italian)