Lateran treaties

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Holy See
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Pope Benedict XVI Roman Curia Secretariat of State Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone Congregations Vatican City Pontifical Commission Conclave Lateran treaties
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The Lateran treaties are three agreements made in 1929 between the kingdom of Italy and the papacy. The treaties, or concordats, settled the question of the relationship between Italy and the Holy See. Known as the Roman Question, this problem had arisen in 1870 when the newly formed kingdom of Italy annexed the Papal States. In 1871 the Italian government guaranteed to Pope Pius IX and his successors the use of the Vatican and the Lateran Palaces and a yearly income of 3,250,000 lire as indemnity for the loss of sovereignty and territory. The Church, claiming the necessity for independence of any political power in its exercise of spiritual jurisdiction, refused to accept this settlement, and the popes thereafter considered themselves prisoners in the Vatican, a small, limited area inside Rome.

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Territory of Vatican City according to the Lateran treaties.

Negotiations for the settlement of the Roman Question began in 1926 between the government of Italy and the Holy See, and in 1929 they culminated in the agreements of the Lateran Treaty, signed for King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and for Pope Pius XI by Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, Cardinal Secretary of State. The agreements included a political treaty, which created the state of the Vatican City and guaranteed full and independent sovereignty to the Holy See. The pope was pledged to perpetual neutrality in international relations and to abstention from mediation to a controversy except when specifically requested by all parties. Also agreed on were a concordat establishing Catholicism as the religion of Italy, and a financial arrangement awarding money to the Holy See in settlement of all its claims against Italy arising from the loss of temporal power in 1870.