A
prisoner in the Vatican or
prisoner of the Vatican is how
Pope Pius IXPope Blessed Pius IX , born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the longest reigning Pope in Church history, serving from 16 June 1846 until his death, a period of nearly 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed Papal infallibility...
described himself following the
captureThe Capture of Rome was the final event of the long process of Italian unification known as the Risorgimento, which finally unified the Italian peninsula under King Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy...
of
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
by the armed forces of the
Kingdom of ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia which is its legal predecessor State, and with the decisive help of France and Great Britain...
on September 20, 1870. Part of the process of
Italian unificationItalian unification was the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century...
, the city's capture ended the millennial
temporal ruleThe temporal power of the Popes is the political and governmental activity of the Popes of the Roman Catholic Church, as distinguished from their spiritual and pastoral activity, which is also called eternal power, to contrast it with the Church's secular power.For centuries, its secular activities...
of the
popeThe pope is the Bishop of Rome and, as such, is leader of the worldwide Catholic Church...
s over central
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
and allowed Rome to be designated the capital of the new nation. The appellation is also applied to Pius's successors through
Pius XIPope Pius XI , born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, was Pope from 6 February 1922, and sovereign of Vatican City from its creation as an independent state on 11 February 1929 until his death on 10 February 1939...
.
As
nationalismNationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation...
swept the Italian peninsula in the 19th century, efforts to unify Italy were blocked in part by the
Papal StatesThe Papal States, State of the Church or Pontifical States were one of the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .The Papal States comprised territories under...
, which ran through the middle of the peninsula and included the ancient capital of Rome.
A
prisoner in the Vatican or
prisoner of the Vatican is how
Pope Pius IXPope Blessed Pius IX , born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the longest reigning Pope in Church history, serving from 16 June 1846 until his death, a period of nearly 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed Papal infallibility...
described himself following the
captureThe Capture of Rome was the final event of the long process of Italian unification known as the Risorgimento, which finally unified the Italian peninsula under King Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy...
of
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
by the armed forces of the
Kingdom of ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia which is its legal predecessor State, and with the decisive help of France and Great Britain...
on September 20, 1870. Part of the process of
Italian unificationItalian unification was the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century...
, the city's capture ended the millennial
temporal ruleThe temporal power of the Popes is the political and governmental activity of the Popes of the Roman Catholic Church, as distinguished from their spiritual and pastoral activity, which is also called eternal power, to contrast it with the Church's secular power.For centuries, its secular activities...
of the
popeThe pope is the Bishop of Rome and, as such, is leader of the worldwide Catholic Church...
s over central
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
and allowed Rome to be designated the capital of the new nation. The appellation is also applied to Pius's successors through
Pius XIPope Pius XI , born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, was Pope from 6 February 1922, and sovereign of Vatican City from its creation as an independent state on 11 February 1929 until his death on 10 February 1939...
.
As
nationalismNationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation...
swept the Italian peninsula in the 19th century, efforts to unify Italy were blocked in part by the
Papal StatesThe Papal States, State of the Church or Pontifical States were one of the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .The Papal States comprised territories under...
, which ran through the middle of the peninsula and included the ancient capital of Rome. The Papal States were able to fend off efforts to conquer them largely through the pope's influence over the leaders of stronger European powers such as
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
and
AustriaThe Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire founded on a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire centered on what is today's Austria that officially lasted from 1804 to 1867...
. When Rome was eventually taken, the Italian government reportedly intended to let the pope keep that part of Rome, west of the
TiberThe Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It drains a basin estimated at...
, called the
Leonine CityThe Leonine City is that part of the city of Rome around which the ninth-century Pope Leo IV commissioned the construction of the Leonine Wall. It is on the opposite side of the Tiber from the seven hills of Rome and was not enclosed within the Aurelian Walls...
as a small remaining Papal State, but Pius IX refused. One week after entering Rome, the Italian troops had taken the entire city save for the
Apostolic PalaceThe Apostolic Palace, also called the Sacred Palace, the Papal Palace or the Palace of the Vatican, is the official residence of the Pope in the Vatican City. It adjoins St...
; the inhabitants of the city then voted to join Italy.
For the next 59 years, the popes refused to leave the Vatican in order to avoid any appearance of accepting the authority wielded by the Italian government over Rome as a whole. During this period, popes also refused to appear at
Saint Peter's SquareSaint Peter's Square is located directly in front of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, the papal enclave within Rome .-History of St...
or at the balcony of the Vatican Basilica facing it, as the square in front of the Basilica was occupied by the Italian troops. During this period, popes granted the "
Urbi et OrbiUrbi et Orbi was a standard opening of Roman proclamations. The term is now used to denote a papal address and Apostolic Blessing that is addressed to the City of Rome and to the entire world....
" blessings from a balcony facing a courtyard, or from inside the Basilica, and Papal Coronations were instead held at the Sistine Chapel. The period ended in 1929, when the Lateran Treaty created the modern state of
Vatican CityVatican City , officially the State of the Vatican City , is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, the capital city of Italy...
.
Law of Guarantees
The 13 May 1871 Italian
Law of GuaranteesAfter the overthrow of the Papal States in 1870, Italy's Law of Guarantees accorded the Pope certain honors and privileges similar to those enjoyed by the King of Italy, including the right to send and receive ambassadors who would have full diplomatic immunity, just as if he still had temporal...
, passed eight months after the capture of Rome, was an attempt to solve the problem by making the pope a subject of the Kingdom of Italy, not an independent sovereign, while guaranteeing him certain honors similar to those given to the king and the right to send and receive ambassadors.
The popes – Pius IX (died 1878) and his successors Leo XIII (reigned 1878–1903), St Pius X (1903–1914), Benedict XV (1914–1922) and (from 1922 until the issue was resolved in 1929) Pius XI – refused to accept this unilateral decision, which, they felt, could be reversed by the same power that granted it, and which did not ensure that their decisions would be clearly seen to be free from interference by a political power. They claimed that total sovereignty was needed so that a civil government would never attempt to interfere in the governance of the universal Catholic Church. Therefore, even after the Law of Guarantees, Pope Pius IX and his successors up to and including Pius XI decided not to leave the Palace of the Vatican, so as not to submit to the authority of the Italian State. As a result of the crisis, Pope Pius IX excommunicated the King of Italy.
Especially in the strongly Catholic rural areas of Italy, there was great tension between Church and State. The newly unified Kingdom of Italy did not recognize the validity of Church weddings, while the Church maintained that the Kingdom was illegitimate and Church weddings were sufficient before God.
Roman Question
Following the fall of Rome, most countries continued to accredit diplomatic representatives to the
Holy SeeThe Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, commonly known as the Pope, and is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and speaks for the whole Catholic...
, seeing it as an entity of public international law with which they desired such relations, while they withdrew their consuls, whose work had been connected instead with the temporal power of the papacy, which was now ended. However, no diplomatic relations existed between the Holy See and the Italian state.
According to Jasper Ridley, at the 1867
Congress of Peace in GenevaIn 1867, Charles Lemonnier convened the Congress of Peace in Geneva, known as the International League of Peace and Liberty. It was ultimately at this conference that it was decided to abolish the sovereignty and international relations of the Holy See, something which Pius IX blamed on secret...
, Garibaldi referred to "that pestilential institution which is called the Papacy" and proposed giving "the final blow to the monster". This was a reflection of the bitterness that had been generated by the struggle against Pope Pius IX in 1849 and 1860, and it was in sharp contrast to the letter that Garibaldi had written to the pope from Montevideo in 1847, before those events.
The stand-off was ended on February 11, 1929, when the Lateran Pacts created a new
microstateA microstate or ministate is a sovereign state having a very small population or very small land area, but usually both. Some examples include: Nauru, Singapore, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and Vatican City...
, that of
Vatican CityVatican City , officially the State of the Vatican City , is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, the capital city of Italy...
, and opened the way for diplomatic relations between Italy and the Holy See. The Holy See in turn recognized the Kingdom of Italy, with Rome as its capital, thus ending the situation whereby the Popes had felt constrained to remain within the Vatican. They were once again able to visit their cathedral, the
Basilica of St. John LateranThe Basilica of St. John Lateran is the cathedral of the Church of Rome, Italy, and the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome, who is the Pope...
, situated on the opposite side of the city of Rome, and to travel regularly to their summer residence at
Castel GandolfoCastel Gandolfo is a small Italian town in Lazio that occupies a height overlooking Lake Albano about 30 km south-east of Rome, on the Alban Hills...
, 30 km from Rome.