Why is Vatican a state?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It isn’t really absurd. The Catholic population didn’t want the Kingdom of Italy to have authority over the Church, and the Church didn’t want the responsibility of having to deal with the secular governance of Rome. The Lateran Treaty was actually a pretty clever way to not give both sides what they didn’t want. It’s debatable, but failure to set up the Vatican as its own city state may very well have triggered a civil war.

Boru

Edit: Yeah, what our favourite lizard said.

Oh really. They didn't want to deal with the secular government. So if the Scientologist population decides to make their own state because they don't want to deal with the secular government, would you also find it not absurd?

Besides, what kind of responsibility does Chruch have in any of the other countries? They don't pay taxes anywhere, they tell people for who to vote, they are frequently entangled with the armies, and clergy meets with state officials to boost their ratings if they choose to. So I don't see Italy to be particularly different.

They didn’t want to deal with governance, not the government. Although there was little love lost between the Holy See and the Kingdom Of Italy, the Pope was perfectly happy to deal with Mussolini to solve ‘the Roman question’. Not wanting to deal with governance simply means that the Pope didn’t want the headache of governing a secular state.

The Pope accepted that, in the 20th Century, he could no longer have pretensions of direct secular authority. And Mussolini understood that if he were to make the Vatican subject to secular law, he’d have 40 million enraged Catholics on his hands. The Lateran treaty solved both problems - it preserved the ecclesiastical authority of the Pope and kept Mussolini from having an armed uprising to deal with.

None of this should be taken as a defense of the Church or its actions. You asked why the Vatican is a state. This is your answer.

Boru