When I heard reports that Benedict XVI’s butler was imprisoned for leading secret documents to the press, I was skeptical of the idea that the accused was actually locked up in a Vatican prison. Talk about a violation of two-kingdom theology. But thanks to the long and contested history of the papacy, it does turn out that the Vatican is a mix of temporal and spiritual authority still to this day. Here is a bit of the history:
Popes in their secular role ruled portions of the Italian peninsula for more than a thousand years until the mid 19th century, when many of the Papal States were seized by the newly united Kingdom of Italy. In 1870, the pope’s holdings were further circumscribed when Rome itself was annexed. Disputes between a series of “prisoner” popes and Italy were resolved in 1929 by three Lateran Treaties, which established the independent state of Vatican City and granted Roman Catholicism special status in Italy. In 1984, a concordat between the Holy See and Italy modified certain of the earlier treaty provisions, including the primacy of Roman Catholicism as the Italian state religion. Present concerns of the Holy See include religious freedom, international development, the environment, the Middle East, China, the decline of religion in Europe, terrorism, interreligious dialogue and reconciliation, and the application of church doctrine in an era of rapid change and globalization. About 1 billion people worldwide profess the Catholic faith.
Here is how the current Vatican penal system works:
It’s like criminal justice in Italy, but smaller. Upon the founding of Vatican City in 1929, Pope Pius XI decided it would be easier to adopt Italian criminal law and procedure—and any subsequent changes to that system—than it would be to build his own version from nothing. (Italy has since become too liberal for the Church on certain issues, such as abortion and homosexuality.) The Vatican’s promotor iustitiae (promoter of justice, or chief prosecutor) has the authority to haul scofflaws before the giudice unico, or trial court judge. Convicts can appeal to the three-judge Tribunale, and ultimately to the Corte di Cassazione, or Supreme Court of Appeals. Accused criminals have the right to a public defender.
Most of the differences between Vatican City’s penal system and those of other Western countries result from the country’s size. There are no jury trials in Vatican City, in part because the country’s entire jury pool consists of fewer than 900 people. Most convictions result in fines rather than confinement, because the Vatican doesn’t have a long-term prison. Those few prisoners who do receive prison sentences are housed in Italian facilities at Pope Benedict XVI’s expense. There is no plea-bargaining.
AdvertisementVatican City does boast a single jail, just to the south of St. Peter’s Basilica, for pretrial detention, but it’s small and more often used for storage of equipment than criminals.
I don’t think this is what Augustine had in mind but it gives a whole new meaning to “I fought the church and the church won.”
Old Life 
I’ll betcha some sleazy member of the Vatican City defense bar has hung his shingle out across the street from that single jail.
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Reminds me of the sign posted on the wall of a convent (years ago) in Santa Monica, CA.
It read; “NO TRESPASSING …Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” signed…’The Sisters of Mercy’
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I had the privilege of spending a summer studying “living Latin” with Reginald Foster, who at the time was the Pope’s Latin Secretary. [Somewhat progressive, he loved to joke “You can’t be a conservative if you don’t know Latin.”]
Well, I got a great tour out of the deal, and somewhere I have a picture of the ATM machine for the “Bank of the Vatican” or whatever it was called. I tell you, punching in your PIN in roman numerals is a real pain in the a$$.
By the way, you got an LOL on the second sentence of this post.
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More seriously, that anyone can really defend a church that is as worldly as the Roman See is beyond me. It is on its face, on biblical grounds, absurd.
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Rome is a dump — crowded, dirty, disordered. And the Vatican is just creepy. Of all the cities I’ve visited in Europe it’s the one I have no desire to visit again.
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Much better to visit the city of Savonarola — Florence.
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Brian,
It’s fascinating to watch just the consternation between the european cardinals, primarily Italian, and the american cardinals. The Italian prelate is responsible for the leaks going on to the Italian press, leaks btw which aren’t contested for their accuracy, just dismay that they are going on after Ratzinger promised to excommunicate them, which also points to the animosity that had built up between Ratzinger and the curia, but in response the Italian cardinals throw the americans under the bus for holding press conferences, approved by the college, as a means to promote transparency. Absurd is a word. That roman curia is gonna bury the Vatican.
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Brian, now you’re sounding like a pietist. Worldly? Is that an adverb?
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Brian – on what biblical grounds are you referring when you say it is “absurd” to defend the Catholic Church? thanks,
Casey
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If anyone’s looking for some reading material here’s an author to check out. I get these titles from the dustjacket of “A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages – In Three Volumes” by Henry Charles Lea. Other books by Lea:
“A History of the Inquisition of Spain – In Four Volumes”
“A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church in Three Volumes”
“An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church”
“A Formulary of the Papal Penitentiary in the Thirteenth Century”
“Superstition and Force”
“Studies in Church History”
“Chapters from the Religious History of Spain, Connected with the Inquisition”
“The Moriscos of Spain, Their Conversion and Expulsion”
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Brian – More seriously, that anyone can really defend a church that is as worldly as the Roman See is beyond me. It is on its face, on biblical grounds, absurd.
Erik – At least they don’t make a show of their piety in order to be seen by men. Oh, wait…
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And now this: http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/151008.html
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Say Hallo to liberashon teology.(spaniel accent). I think I read Yorio reconciled with Francis. Francis was a conservative compared to his Jesuit brethren-marxist. And the hits just keep on coming. At some point it seems like you’d wanna take refuge in a perfect priest, but I’m sure that’s a paradigmatic issue.
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That was the one thing about being an RC, we had an answer for everything. Between the scriptures, sacred tradition and the magisterium, we could cobble together just about anything we needed from turn key solutions to social/political concerns, including militarization, to plumbing the depths of religious asceticism. We were a veritable one stop-shop. Then we got our hands on higher critical methods……’katy bar the door’.
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Does this mean that the pope is thinking about relocating Vatican offices to, say, Mexico City?
Jesus invites us, not only to take the risk of leaving our comfort zone, but also to deal with the tension involved in change, not dismissively but in a creative way, and to challenge each other to do so. Maybe, we hear that challenge today as a call to leave behind our comforting convictions that episodic Sunday Mass attendance is good enough, that we don’t really have to change our habitual bad behavior, our unhealthy dependencies, our inordinate attachments, because we can get by as we are, because they have not gotten us into any serious trouble yet, or just because we are afraid of the unknown.
Pope Francis is giving voice to this invitation in our day, by inviting the Church to come and walk with Christ, as he is always doing something new. It is an invitation to leave behind the comfort of going the familiar way. He is challenging us to recognize that Christ is always inviting us to more, to greater things. It is the kind of invitation our bishops’ conference is making to our nation to be what it has always promised to be, to protect the vulnerable, poor and weak, to treat immigrants with justice and dignity, to respect life and to be good stewards of creation. It is the invitation of Jesus, “Come, take the risk of being more.”
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When will someone make a House of Cards based on the Vatican (good thing Roman Catholic apologists admit that the church errs — though too bad they can’t tell really the difference between good error and bad):
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