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• 1 2023-06-19T11:00:25-07:00 The Vatican 5 Observing how and why a religion becomes a nation-state. plain 2023-07-14T10:30:23-07:00

  INTRODUCTION

  Nestled into the heart of the Italian city of Rome is an independent city-state called the Vatican. Also known as Vatican City, the independent nation is under the total authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church. Since the signing of the Lateran Pacts between the Church and Italy on February 11th, 1929 CE, the jurisdiction of the Pope (also known as “the Holy See”) maintains diplomatic relations with other sovereign states and foreign embassies, as well as establishing treaties between the Papacy and other entities. In short terms, the Catholic Church controls and rules its own country. The independence of the Vatican, along with its government structure, makes it one of the most distinct nations in the world.

  The formation of the Vatican City begs the question as to how and why a religion gets to have its own nation. After all, the Vatican is landlocked with no independent access to ports of any kind to facilitate trade. On top of that, the refusal of the Holy See to be a part of Italy questions why Italy allowed their independence to begin with. With so many questions requires lots of research and analysis. For that, let’s take a look at the activity below.

  ACTIVITY

  Let’s first understand the Vatican a little more from the videos below:

  Now let discuss the factors that led to the independence of the Vatican (link)

  Now that we have gone through this activity, let’s answer the following questions in the comment section:

  1) How do you think religion can affect governance?

  2) How is the Vatican able to stay as an independent country?

  3) Can you think of any other examples that relate to the religious governance of the Vatican?