Vatican City
Vatican , residence of the pope at Rome. Since the so-called Roman Question was ended by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 between Pope Pius XI and King Victor Emmanuel III (negotiated by Cardinal Gasparri and Mussolini), the Vatican City. has been an independent state (108.7 acres/44 hectares), with the pope as its absolute ruler. It may be said to correspond politically to the former Papal States, but its origin is not connected with them.
The City of the Vatican in Rome is an autonomous State governed directly by the Pontificate and officially recognized through the "Patti Lateranensi" of 1929 after Christ by the Italian Republic.
Vatican City
Conciliazione", parts of the antique villages were destroyed. The street, that obviously completely changes the meaning of the columns and the rapport the work had with the rest of the area, was above all the tangible sign of the willing to recompose in a definitive way the disunion between the Italian State and the Church by ideally unifying the Basilica of the Vatican with the centre of Rome and the edifices of the Quirinale (Residence of the President of the Republic) and Campidoglio (Square designed by Michelangelo).
Nowadays the City of the Vatican is the smallest State of the world with its roughly 440000 square metres, but it maintains the privileges of an independent State such as to have its own public representations, its own philatelic and numismatic values and official bodies of press, such as the head of the Roman Observer.
Geography
The Vatican City State is situated on the Vatican hill, on the right bank of the Tiber River, within the city of Rome.
Government
The pope has full legal, executive, and judicial powers. Executive power over the area is in the hands of a commission of cardinals appointed by the pope. The College of Cardinals is the pope's chief advisory body, and upon his death the cardinals elect his successor for life.
History
The Vatican City State, sovereign and independent, is the survivor of the papal states that in 1859 comprised an area of some 17,000 sq mi (44,030 sq km). During the struggle for Italian unification, from 1860 to 1870, most of this area became part of Italy. By an Italian law of May 13, 1871, the temporal power of the pope was abrogated, and the territory of the papacy was confined to the Vatican and Lateran palaces and the villa of Castel Gandolfo. The popes consistently refused to recognize this arrangement. The Lateran Treaty of Feb. 11, 1929, between the Vatican and the kingdom of Italy established the autonomy of the Holy See.
The first session of Ecumenical Council Vatican II was opened by John XXIII on Oct. 11, 1962, to plan and set policies for the modernization of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Paul VI continued the council, presiding over the last three sessions. Vatican II, as it is called, revolutionized some of the church's practices. Power was decentralized, giving bishops a larger role, the liturgy was vernacularized, and laymen were given a larger part in church affairs.
Recent History
On Aug. 26, 1978, Cardinal Albino Luciani was chosen by the College of Cardinals to succeed Paul VI, who had died of a heart attack on Aug. 6. The new pope took the name John Paul I. Only 34 days after his election, John Paul I died of a heart attack, ending the shortest reign in 373 years. On Oct. 16, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, 58, was chosen pope and took the name John Paul II. Pope John Paul II 5became the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope since the 16th century.
On May 13, 1981, a Turkish terrorist shot the pope in St. Peter's Square, the first assassination attempt against the pontiff in modern times. The pope later met and forgave him. On June 3, 1985, the Vatican and Italy ratified a new church-state treaty, known as a concordat, replacing the Lateran Pact of 1929. The new accord affirmed the independence of Vatican City but ended a number of privileges the Catholic Church had in Italy, including its status as the state religion.
On April 2, 2005, John Paul died. He was the third-longest reigning pope (26 years). A champion of the poor, many credit him with hastening the fall of communism in Poland and other eastern bloc countries. His vitality and charisma energized the world's 1 billion Catholics. His rule was characterized by conservatism regarding church doctrine, particularly on issues such as birth control, women's roles in the church, and homosexuality. The pope also remained circumspect about the U.S. church's sexual abuse scandals in 2002. He has was the Vatican's greatest ambassador, traveling to 129 countries. John Paul canonized 482 saints and beatified 1,338 people, believed to be more than all his predecessors combined.
On April 19, German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was named the new pope. Pope Benedict XVI is known as an accomplished scholar of theology and is considered an arch conservative in his religious views. He served as Pope John Paul II's closest associate and is expected to continue the policy of a “strong Rome”—the church's power will not become more decentralized but remain firmly in the hands of Rome
The State of the Vatican is located on the right shore of the Tevere River, around the Basilica of San Pietro, on the site of the antique "Ager Vaticanus", where, during the first period of the Imperial Rome, among the numerous Christians who suffered the martyr, it seems that there was also San Pietro. On the order of Mussolini, around 1936 after Christ, the urban asset of the area in front of the columns of Bernini was radically changed, and to leave the space for the "Via della
