Prisoner in the Vatican
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A prisoner in the Vatican is what Pope Pius IX claimed to be after the army of the Kingdom of Italy entered in Rome (September 20, 1870), as a component of Italian unification, ending the millennial temporal rule of the popes over central Italy. The appellation is also applied to his successors through Pope Pius XI.
The Italian government intended to allow the pope to keep that part of Rome called the Leonine City as a small remaining Papal State<ref>Kertzer, p. 45.</ref>, but Pius IX would not accept that arrangement (like the inhabitants of the rione of Borgo, part of the Leonine City, which unanimously voted to join Italy)<ref>Kertzer, p. 63.</ref>. For the next 59 years, it was impossible to reach an accord between the popes and the new Kingdom of Italy and the popes refused, on their own will, to leave the Vatican.
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[edit] Law of Guarantees
The Italian Law of Guarantees was the attempt to solve the problem, making the pope a subject of the Kingdom of Italy with certain honors to be accorded- honors similar to those given the king, and guaranteeing him the right to send and receive ambassadors. It was not accepted by the popes as it implied the authority of the Italian monarch to legislate the role of the pope.[citations needed]
[edit] Roman Question
Following the fall of Rome, no diplomatic relations existed between the popes and the Italian State. The Italian rulers took up residence in the Quirinal Palace, and seized church property throughout Rome and Italy, but did not have the political support to seize the Vatican. Even prior to the fall of Rome, Italian republicans had sought to eliminate the papacy, with Giuseppe Garibaldi seeking international support for that end at an 1867 congress in Vienna, where he proposed "The papacy, being the most harmful of all secret societies, ought to be abolished."<ref>Giuseppe Guerzoni, Garibaldi: con documenti editi e inediti, Florence, 1882, Vol. 11, 485.</ref>
According to Jasper Ridley,<ref>Garibaldi, Viking Press, New York (1976) p. 576-77</ref> at the 1867 Congress of Peace in Geneva, Garibaldi referred to "that pestilential institution which is called the Papacy" and proposed giving "the final blow to the monster.". This was a reflection of the bitterness that had been generated by the follies of Pope Pius IX in 1849 and 1860, and it was in sharp contrast to the letter that Garibaldi had written to the pope from Montevideo in 1847.
- "If these hands, used to fighting, would be acceptable to His Holiness, we most thankfully dedicate them to the service of him who deserves so well of the Church and of the fatherland. Joyful indeed shall we and our companions in whose name we speak be, if we may be allowed to shed our blood in defence of Pio Nono's work of redemption" (October 12, 1847).<ref>A. Werner, Autobiography of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Vol. III, p. 68, Howard Fertig, New York, 1971.</ref>
However, unlike the earlier invasions of Italy by Napoléon, when Pope Pius VI died in French captivity, and Pius VII was taken captive for six years, the tension between the Italian state and the Papacy continued for 59 years, during which time the popes claimed to be unable to leave the Vatican. While some of the Italian revolutionaries thought that the papacy would disappear without the continuance of the papal states, the popes, relieved of their temporal concerns, grew in stature during their years of "imprisonment." Eventually, it became impossible for the Italian state not to recognize the independence of the Vatican, and on February 11, 1929, the Lateran treaties established political relations between Italy and Vatican City.
The popes did not leave the Vatican even after the Lateran treaties for several years: Although they traveled privately to Castel Gandolfo, they made no public visits outside the Vatican. The only exception occurred during World War II, when Pope Pius XII made brief visits to some bombed neighborhoods of Rome.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Kertzer, David. Prisoner of the Vatican. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.es:Prisionero en el Vaticano
