The Lateran Treaty ( it, Patti Lateranensi; la, Pacta Lateranensia) was one component of the Lateran Pacts of 1929, agreements between the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to an institutional referendum to abandon the monarchy and f ...

under

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and the

Holy See The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of R ...

under Pope Pius XI to settle the long-standing Roman Question. The treaty and associated pacts were named after the Lateran Palace where they were signed on 11 February 1929, and the Italian parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929. The treaty recognized

Vatican City Vatican City (), officially the Vatican City State ( it, Stato della Città del Vaticano; la, Status Civitatis Vaticanae),—' * german: Vatikanstadt, cf. '—' (in Austria: ') * pl, Miasto Watykańskie, cf. '—' * pt, Cidade do Vati ...

as an independent state under the sovereignty of the Holy See. The Italian government also agreed to give the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

financial compensation for the loss of the Papal States. In 1948, the Lateran Treaty was recognized in the

Constitution of Italy The Constitution of the Italian Republic ( it, Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana) was enacted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 December 1947, with 453 votes in favour and 62 against. The text, which has since been amended sixteen times, ...

as regulating the relations between the state and the Catholic Church. Constitution of Italy, article 7. The treaty was significantly revised in 1984, ending the status of Catholicism as the sole state religion.

Content

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 A concordat is a convention between the Holy See and a sovereign state that defines the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state in matters that concern both,René Metz, ''What is Canon Law?'' (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1960 st Edi ...

. 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: * A political treaty recognising the full sovereignty of the Holy See in the State of

, 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 * A

regulating relations between the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and the Italian state

History

During the

unification of Italy The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

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

from the steps of

St. Peter's Basilica The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican ( it, Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano), or simply Saint Peter's Basilica ( la, Basilica Sancti Petri), is a church built in the Renaissance style located in Vatican City, the papal e ...

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 Latium ( , ; ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Definition Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil ( Old Latium) on w ...

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". 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, on 11 February 1929. It was ratified on 7 June 1929. The agreements included a political treaty which created the state of the Vatican City and guaranteed full and independent sovereignty to the

. The Pope was pledged to perpetual neutrality in

international relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such a ...

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". 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 The Law of Guarantees ( it, Legge delle guarentigie), sometimes also called the Law of Papal Guarantees, was the name given to the law passed by the senate and chamber of the Italian parliament, 13 May, 1871, concerning the prerogatives of the Hol ...

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 Sovereignty is the defining authority within individual consciousness, social construct, or territory. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within the state, as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the perso ...

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 Via della Conciliazione (Road of the Conciliation) is a street in the Rione of Borgo within Rome, Italy. Roughly in length, it connects Saint Peter's Square to the Castel Sant'Angelo on the western bank of the Tiber River. The road was constru ...

(Road of the Conciliation), which would symbolically link the Vatican City to the heart of Rome.

After 1946

The Constitution of the Italian Republic, adopted in 1948, states that relations between the State and the Catholic Church "are regulated by the Lateran Treaties". In 1984, the concordat was significantly revised. Among other things, both sides declared: "The principle of the Catholic religion as the sole religion of the Italian State, originally referred to by the Lateran Pacts, shall be considered to be no longer in force". The Church's position as the sole state-supported religion of Italy was also ended, replacing the state financing with a personal income tax called the '' otto per mille'', to which other religious groups, Christian and non-Christian, also have access. , there are ten other religious groups with access. The revised concordat regulated the conditions under which civil effects are accorded by Italy to church marriages and to ecclesiastical declarations of nullity of marriages. Abolished articles included those concerning state recognition of knighthoods and titles of nobility conferred by the Holy See, the undertaking by the Holy See to confer ecclesiastical honours on those authorized to perform religious functions at the request of the State or the Royal Household, and the obligation of the Holy See to enable the Italian government to present political objections to the proposed appointment of diocesan bishops. In 2008, it was announced that the Vatican would no longer immediately adopt all Italian laws, citing conflict over right-to-life issues following the trial and ruling of the Eluana Englaro case.

Violations

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.Zuccotti, 2000, p. 37. Further, Article 34 of the Concordat had also specified that marriages performed by the Catholic Church would always be considered valid by civil authorities: Zuccotti, 2000, p. 48. 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.

Notes

References

Sources

* Kertzer, David I. (2004). ''Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes' Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company). * * Latourette, Kenneth Scott. ''Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: A History of Christianity in the 19th and 20th Century: Vol. 4 The 20th Century in Europe'' (1961), pp. 32–35, 153, 156, 371. * McCormick, Anne O'Hare (1957). ''Vatican Journal: 1921-1954'' (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy) * Pollard, John F. (2005). ''The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1929–32: A Study in Conflict''. Cambridge University Press. . * Pollard, Jonh F. (2014). ''The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914–1958''. Oxford University Press. . * * * Suzzallo, Henry, Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D., Editor in Chief, '' The National Encyclopedia: Volume 10'', (New York, P. F. Collier & Son Corporation, 1935) * Archival sources *

External links

Text of the Lateran Treaty
(English translation)

(original Italian)
Italian law executing the Lateran Pacts, with the text and annexed maps
(original Italian) {{Authority control 1929 in Italy Modern history of Italy Government of Vatican City Political history of Vatican City History of Catholicism in Italy History of Rome Holy See–Italy relations Italy–Vatican City border Pope Pius XI Treaties entered into force in 1929 Treaties concluded in 1929 Treaties of the Holy See (1870–1929) Treaties of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946) Law of Vatican City 1929 in Vatican City 1920s in Rome February 1929 events Interwar-period treaties Legal history of Vatican City