Vatican on Alert - ISIS Threat

[Lucanus]

So walk me through this -- say hypothetically, ISIS(L) makes good on their threat and launches an attack resulting in harm or death of the Pope.

Then what? What does the semi-homogeneous "west" do about it?

They are already a very naughty group indeed and not exactly on everyone's XMAS card list.

Vatican City is a sovereign nation, and as Davka points out they have no useful military forces of their own. Their formal neutrality means that they have no security treaty with any other nation, either. They'd have to ask another country to undertake the war on the Vatican's behalf. Italy could perhaps be pushed into that position, because by treaty Italy is supposed to treat an attack on the Pope as an attack on the Italian king, but that's a little bit of a stretch.

The current Italian government would never support a war of that kind, mostly because errr... We got no money! That, and outright war is prohibited by constitution, even though ISIS is not exactly a state. I don't exactly know what the reaction to an attack on the Pope *should* be as the treaty you mentioned was signed under Mussolini and has since been updated. (we also haven't had a king in the last 70-ish years, lol) I'm more worried about the fascists exploiting the attack to gain political ground.