The European Journal of International Law Vol. 26 no. 4
EJIL (2015), Vol. 26 No. 4, 927–946	 doi:10.1093/ejil/chv062
© The Author, 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EJIL Ltd.
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The International Legal Status of
the Vatican/Holy See Complex
John R. Morss*
Abstract
This article offers a re-examination of the international legal status of what is here termed the
Vatican/Holy See complex (VHS), focusing on claims to statehood. The problematic ‘effect’
of Vatican City, of the Holy See, of the papacy and of associated entities is interrogated
at the level of international law, entering as little as possible into administrative or theological
distinctions. The various grounds cited as supporting status amounting to statehood
are argued to be inadequate. The continuing exchange of representatives with states by the
VHS is missionary and hierarchical in character and is reflective neither of the reciprocity of
peers nor of customary obligation going to law. Agreements entered into by the papacy with
the Kingdom of Italy (the Lateran Pacts) in 1929, relating to the status of the geographical
territory known as Vatican City, cannot be determinative of international status. Nor
can membership of international agreements and organizations confer a status amounting
to statehood. Events and practices since 1929 have not substantially altered international
status as of 1870. The Roman Catholic Church is but one of many faith-based international
movements, and since the eclipse of the papal state nearly one-and-a-half centuries ago, the
status in international law of its temporal headquarters in Rome should not be privileged.
1 Introduction
A  An Entity Sui Generis
Up until the later years of the 19th century, there existed the ‘papal states’ in the geographical
heart of what is now (but for San Marino) a unified Italy, a territory from
which military, as well as diplomatic and spiritual, forces were deployed. The papal
states had been conquered or overrun at various times, perhaps most notably in the
Napoleonic era, and individual popes had on many occasions fled Rome for short or
*	 Deakin University Law School, Victoria, Australia. Early versions of this article were presented at the
Annual Conference of the Australian Society for Legal Philosophy, held at the University of Queensland
in 2011, and at the School of Law at the University of Sheffield in 2012. I gratefully acknowledge the
bibliographic assistance of Don Ford and the assistance of the staff of many libraries both public and
institutional in Cambridge, Florence and Melbourne. Email: john.morss@deakin.edu.au.
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928 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
extended periods of time. These circumstances – the existence of a papal territory –
were long over when an agreement was reached between the incumbent Pope and
Benito Mussolini in 1929, according to which a small area of Rome (the Vatican City)
would be treated by the Kingdom of Italy as having special status. The international
status of this ‘sui generis’1
entity is both conceptually problematic and of practical concern
– whether this status amounts to statehood or to something less than statehood.2
Yasmin Abdullah, Geoffrey Robertson and Gillian Triggs have rejected the claim to
statehood.3
Robertson accuses the Roman Catholic Church of culpability in relation to the
worldwide sexual abuse of minors. To the extent that the Vatican City or the Holy
See has either internationally recognized statehood, or a status that in any way
approaches statehood so as to sustain any of the privileges that go with statehood,
then any ‘normal’ criminal investigation is impeded.4
There are protections generally
available under customary international law for incumbent heads of state and other
senior state officials. The detention of a papal official in or around the Vatican might
correspondingly give rise to questions of state sovereignty. The status of the incumbent
Pope as a national of Argentina, and, hence, prima facie, subject to Argentinian
jurisdiction over serious criminal allegations as head of the Roman Catholic Church,
is rendered problematic by anything approaching statehood for the Vatican. Recourse
is uncertain from the Vatican’s own processes since under the Vatican Constitution,
which was promulgated in 2000, the Pope ‘has the fullness of legislative, executive
and judiciary power’.5
Statehood brings with it obligations to accept responsibility for internationally
wrongful acts that were committed by, or can be attributed to, the state.6
The Vatican
has been allowed, in effect, to select attributes of statehood that it wishes to enjoy
(such as those conferring powers, influence and immunities) without accompanying
those privileges with an acknowledgement of the obligations that normally attend
statehood. Thus, as Ioana Cismas explains, in allowing that some threshold has been
crossed by the compound or construct of the Holy See and Vatican, affording the basis
for international immunities, international obligations are also triggered.7
Religious
organizations are deserving of no special legal protection from such obligations,
where they are otherwise appropriate. With the advantageous incidents of statehood
1
	 J. Crawford, Brownlie’s Principles of International Law (8th edn, 2012), at 124; G. Robertson, The Case of
the Pope (2010), at 160.
2
	 As discussed later in this article, Cismas argues that a holistic ‘construct’ or compound of the Vatican City
and Holy See (VHS) amounts, since 1929, to an entity with ‘the resemblance of statehood’. I. Cismas,
Religious Actors and International Law (2014), at 155.
3
	 Abdullah, ‘The Holy See at United Nations Conferences: State or Church?’, 96 Columbia Law Review
(1996) 1835; Robertson, supra note 1; G. Triggs, International Law: Contemporary Principles and Practices
(2nd edn, 2011), at 249; also see Neu, ‘“Workers of God”: The Holy See’s Liability for Clerical Sexual
Abuse’, 63 Vanderbilt Law Review (2010) 1507, at 1538.
4
	Robertson, supra note 1, at 164.
5
	 Martens, ‘The Position of the Holy See and Vatican City State in International Relations’, 83 University of
Detroit Mercy Law Review (2005–2006) 729, at 750.
6
	 J. Crawford, The International Law Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility (2002), at 77.
7
	Cismas, supra note 2, at 237.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 929
go the responsibilities, such as, in this case, the responsibility for extraterritorial violations
of human rights standards by persons and other legal entities closely connected
with such a state-like entity. Perhaps anything like statehood is inchoate until both
obligations and rights have been engaged. It could be argued that this selectivity in
the deployment of the Vatican’s international personality itself undermines the legitimacy
of any claims to statehood, which involves correlative rights and obligations.8
B  The Vatican/Holy See Complex
The focus of this article is on the international legal dimension of the activities and
the status of what is here termed the Vatican/Holy See complex (VHS).9
This is a pragmatic
and inclusive term of convenience to allow for a variety of powers, status or
obligations to be attributed to one or more components of that complex or, occasionally,
to the whole ‘package’, without it being felt necessary to pin the matter down
with more terminological exactitude.10
Such exactitude, even if desirable, would seem
to call for fine theological or administrative distinctions that are beyond the scope,
or beneath the attention, of international law.11
Further, the power relationships
between Pope, Roman Catholic Church, Vatican City, and Holy See are themselves
unstable since ‘[i]t is the Pope, as the Head of the Roman Catholic Church and the
Head of the Vatican Government, who decides on the hierarchical relation between
the Holy See and the Vatican Government’.12
This personal and discretionary form of
sovereignty, consistent with the entire absence of any separation of powers within
the Vatican’s legal systems,13
greatly reduces, or may even entirely undermine, the
validity of any formula for what may be termed the ‘separation of international powers’
as between Holy See, Vatican City and pontiff.14
It may be that one of the many articulations in the literature on relationships
between the Holy See, Vatican City, and so on may be both accurate and of persisting
applicability. But such formulations cannot be relied upon in the international law
context. The Holy See cannot be thought of straightforwardly as the government of
the Vatican State territory for the Holy See is ‘the central authority and administrative
8
	See Island of Palmas (The Netherlands v. United States of America), Decision of 4 April 1928, reprinted in
UNRIAA, vol. 2, 829, 839. Importantly, secular states themselves sometimes adopt a ‘“pick-and-choosea-personality”
strategy’ in their dealings with VHS. Cismas, supra note 2, at 193.
9
	 Araujo, ‘The International Personality and Sovereignty of the Holy See’, 50 Catholic University Law
Review (2000–2001) 291; Bathon, ‘The Atypical International Status of the Holy See’, 34 Vanderbilt
Journal of Transnational Law (2001) 597; Dias, ‘Roman Catholic Church & [sic] International Law’, 13 Sri
Lanka Journal of International Law (2001) 107.
10
	 The ‘top-down’ term ‘Vatican/Holy See complex’ is to be distinguished from the ‘bottom-up’ notion of
a ‘construct’ or compound of Vatican City and the Holy See, as together comprising a single entity with
international legal personality, as described by Cismas, supra note 2, at 153.
11
	 J. Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law (2nd edn, 2006), at 228.
12
	 J. Duursma, Fragmentation and the International Relations of Micro-States: Self-Determination and Statehood
(1996), at 387.
13
	 Ibid., at 377.
14
	 E.g., the proposal that while both the Holy See and Vatican City have international legal personality, in
neither case are they entirely dependent on the personality of the other; only the latter is a state. Ibid., at
386; Martens, supra note 5, at 755; R. Portmann, Legal Personality (2010), at 116.
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930 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
organ of the Catholic Church’,15
which is a role well beyond ‘governing’ the Vatican
City. If the Holy See were a government in the sense of a regime, it would be as such
invisible to international law. In any event, the Holy See is defined expansively in the
Code of Canon Law as comprising the pontiff, the Roman Curia16
and ‘that which
appears from natural law or the context’.17
At the same time, ‘a country does not
have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, but with the Holy See’.18
In its preparatory
work for the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the International Law
Commission noted that treaties are ‘entered into not by reason of territorial sovereignty
over the Vatican State, but on behalf of the Holy See, which exists separately
from that State’.19
The aim of the inclusive terminological strategy adopted in this article, which is
an attempted cutting of a conceptual Gordian knot, is to ensure as much as possible
that any substantive claims to international legitimacy are recognized irrespective of
the nomenclature in use. Generally speaking, international law is unconcerned with
wording. A bilateral document called a ‘treaty’ may or may not be defined as a treaty
under international law. To say that VHS has some international legal status will
thus mean, for example, that the status can be attributed to either ‘the Vatican’ or the
‘Vatican City’ in some sense, as the supposed state or other entity, and/or to the Holy
See as a form of governance, institution, supposed state or international organiza-
tion.20
Senior officials of the Roman Catholic Church may be included to the extent
that such individuals may be said to partake of international legal status as a consequence
of that role.21
15
	Crawford, supra note 11, at 225.
16
	 Canon 360 states that ‘[t]he Supreme Pontiff usually conducts the business of the universal Church by
means of the Roman Curia, which fulfils its duty in his name and by his authority … it consists of the
Secretariat of State or the Papal Secretariat, the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church, congregations,
tribunals and other institutions’. Reprinted in J. Coriden, T. Green and D. Heintschel (eds), The Code
of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary (1985), at 294.
17
	Duursma, supra note 12, at 387. For Cardinale, ‘Holy See’ has three distinct meanings: the Pope plus
the curia; the Pope as head of the Roman Catholic Church in descent from St. Peter; and the spiritual
organization of papal government: H. Cardinale, The Holy See and the International Order (1976), at 82.
The Holy See is ‘the Pope’s competent international agent’ and is (with the Roman Catholic Church and
the Vatican state) one of three distinct subjects of international law under the Pope’s sovereignty. Ibid., at
117.
18
	Martens, supra note 5, at 729. Former Australian representative to the Holy See Tim Fischer is probably
unique in defining the Holy See as a ‘nation state’. T. Fischer, Holy See, Unholy Me: 1000 Days in Rome
(2013), at 49.
19
	 Cited Araujo, supra note 9, at 343; Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969, 1155 UNTS 331.
20
	 Membership of some international organizations is in the name of ‘Vatican City State’, while other international
arrangements are signed by the Holy See. Martens, supra note 5, at 757–758; Crawford, supra
note 11, at 227–228; Cismas, supra note 2, at 156. Both ‘Vatican City’ and ‘the Holy See’ were at different
times named as members of the World Intellectual Property Organization, and similar re-definitions
have occurred in the context of the Interntional Atomic Energy Agency and of the United Nations (UN).
Duursma, supra note 12, at 402–405. In any event, ratification is carried out by the Pope. Ibid., at 378.
Indeed, the Pope may be directly referenced by one usage of the term Holy See. Bathon, supra note 9, at 598.
21
	 With the long historical significance of the Vatican buildings prior to the 1929 definition of a ‘Vatican City
state’, whether the papal residence or not, the term VHS is not anachronistic in relation to that period.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 931
Controversy over the international status of the papal entity in its various forms is
not new. Lassa Oppenheim attributed a ‘quasi international position’ to the Holy See,
under which it was entitled to be treated ‘as though she were an International Person’,
just as the Pope was entitled to be treated ‘as though he were the head of a monarchical
State’, while neither was in fact the case.22
In 1929, Charles Fenwick canvassed
diverse expert opinions relating to the period after 1870, including the alternatives
of the eclipse of international character versus the fullness of sovereignty.23
In 1952,
Josef Kunz opined that the Holy See, while never a state, had always retained an international
legal personality. For Kunz, Vatican City is distinct as an international person
from the Holy See and is a state but not a sovereign state – instead, ‘a vassal state of the
Holy See’.24
International legal personality is a much wider term than statehood, but
questions relating to statehood open up these wider issues. Criteria for statehood, and
the general issue of diplomatic representation, should both be discussed at this point.
2  Criteria for VHS Statehood: General Considerations
A  The Limited Applicability of the Montevideo Criteria
In relation to statehood, many recent commentators have pointed out that VHS in
many ways fails to meet what might be called the ‘textbook’ criteria for statehood in
international law,25
as articulated in the 1933 Convention on the Rights and Duties
of States (Montevideo Convention).26
In brief, these criteria refer to four dimensions:
permanent population; defined territory; government and the capacity to enter into
international agreements. Clearly, there is no sustainable, civil population if the territorial
base is taken to be the Vatican City itself.The population is transient, comprising
the main papal officials and employees, who are allowed to reside. No person would
become stateless as a consequence of relinquishing Vatican citizenship or having that
citizenship terminated, either as a child leaving parents or as an adult leaving employment
or an official position in Vatican City.27
As discussed further below, the setting
up of Vatican City in 1929 can be said to have deliberately excluded any person other
than those ‘recruited’ – an arresting antipode to the self-determination of a people.28
Correspondingly, the physical territory is small. (It is important to note of course that
22
	 L. Oppenheim, International Law: A Treatise, vol. 1 (2nd edn, 1911), at 160.
23
	 Fenwick, ‘The New City of the Vatican’, 23 American Journal of International Law (AJIL) (1929) 371.
24
	 Kunz, ‘The Status of the Holy See in International Law’, 46 AJIL (1952) 308, at 313.
25
	 H. Charlesworth and C. Chinkin, The Boundaries of International Law (2000), at 134; Robertson, supra
note 1; Triggs, supra note 3, at 249.
26
	 Convention on the Rights and Duties of States 1933, 165 LNTS 19, Art. 1; see M. Dixon, R. McCorquodale
and S. Williams, Cases and Materials on International Law (5th edn, 2011), at 137.
27
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 110; girls born in Vatican City may retain Vatican citizenship while they
remain single, while boys lose Vatican citizenship at age 25. Crawford, supra note 11, at 223. Citizenship
and other residence rights may be withdrawn at any time at the discretion of the pontiff. Duursma, supra
note 12, at 383.
28
	 De la Brière, ‘La Condition Juridique de la Cité du Vatican’, 33 Recueil des Cours de L’Academie de Droit
International de la Haye (1930) 113, at 130: ‘[L]e recrutement tout particulier de sa population.’
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932 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
the Montevideo Convention formula does not specify a minimum size for a population
or for a territory.) There is effective government in place. There are numerous
international agreements to which either the ‘Vatican’ or the ‘Holy See’ are party, but
membership in international agreements is not conclusive in relation to statehood –
‘entities other than States can make treaties’.29
In any event, alignment or misalignment with the Montevideo criteria is far from
conclusive. There is no basis for calling upon these criteria to adjudicate on the statehood
of any particular entity, and there is no international mechanism by which entry
to the category of statehood is regulated.The Montevideo Convention’s ‘hackneyed formula’
is no more than an empirical sketch of the general attributes of entities already
accepted as states.30
For James Crawford, in the case of entities whose statehood is in
question for some reason, statehood is a matter of function and of legitimacy.31
While
this approach differs from that of Robertson, who places considerable weight on the
Montevideo criteria, it arrives at a similar conclusion to Robertson on the international
legal status of VHS. In the third section of this article, a chronological framework will
be adopted in order to examine the grounds upon which claims to statehood (or a status
close to statehood) might legitimately have been based at different times. Attention
is focused on the period from approximately 1800 to 1929 for reasons to be explained.
Criteria for statehood and for its related territorial sovereignty have evolved over
the centuries. The role played by conquest in earlier centuries, up to perhaps the
19th century, has been in some respects taken over by self-determination in modern
times. Contestation over statehood includes the problematic status of micro-states,
‘rogue’ states, ‘failed’ states, newly emergent states and ‘Bantustans’ (pseudo-state
enclaves).32
A related category would be states that, like the Baltic states, ‘disappear’
as geopolitical entities as the result of what might in earlier centuries have counted as
conquest, yet which retain some international legitimacy as suppressed states.33
B  Diplomacy as International Law
The sending and receiving of representation was well established before the Lateran
Pacts defined the Vatican City as such in 1929. Such international relationships had
not come to an end with the extinguishing of the papal state by Italian unification
in 1870. It has been suggested that international legal personality for the Holy See,
although not amounting to statehood, continued to exist in the period 1870–1929
in a manner constituted by the ongoing reciprocity of diplomatic relationships.34
The
29
	Crawford, supra note 11, at 44.
30
	 Ibid., at 437: ‘Despite its regional character and low participation, the Convention definition is referred to
reflexively, irrespective of its actual language or of the context’ (at 46). Habit is not custom, and the assertion
that ‘the criteria of the Montevideo Convention … have now passed into customary international
law’, Dixon, McCorquodale and Williams, supra note 26, at 137, must be questioned.
31
	 Legitimacy brings up normative aspects – in particular, issues of self-determination – which is a consideration
noticeably lacking from the Montevideo formula. Crawford, supra note 11.
32
	Duursma, supra note 12; Crawford, supra note 11, at 722.
33
	 See also Acquaviva, ‘Subjects of International Law: A Power-Based Analysis’, 38 Vanderbilt Journal of
Transnational Law (2005) 345.
34
	Cismas, supra note 2, at 162; Crawford, supra note 11, at 226.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 933
exchange of representatives (however termed) between those purporting to be international
persons, such as sovereigns, is no light matter. However, unless the exchange
is founded on some kind of legal obligation, presumably of a customary nature, then
the practice must be classified at best as courtesy or protocol.35
Indeed, both the sending
and the receiving are discretionary on the part of the VHS – diplomacy is only a
means to the end of the Roman Catholic Church mission and is not essential in itself.36
Vatican diplomacy is informed by, and in many ways consistent with, international
law, but it cannot be said to be governed by it. It would seem to be religious or political.37
There are various practices between states and other entities that, however regular
and habitual, however widely observed, and however important for political or other
reasons, have never been taken to constitute international law. Crossing the line from
‘mere custom’ to customary law requires a significant, if imperfectly defined, step.38
Political expediency does not suffice.39
Importantly, the 19th-century legal attitude
to this question was the same as that of the 20th century.40
Secular states’ dealings
with the papal states in mid-century up until the 1860s, and their dealings with the
VHS in the period after Italian unification was completed in 1870, must be seen in
this light. A statement made by the Brazilian representative at the Vatican, dean of
the diplomatic corps, immediately following the conclusion of the Lateran process in
early 1929, is of interest.41
Charles de Azeredo suggested that secular state sovereigns
had been offering recognition of a kind of sovereignty in the papacy for many years by
maintaining representation. An unworthy (non-sovereign) papacy, he argued, would
not have attracted or maintained that practice. However, (secular) sovereigns are not
obliged to send representatives out to any particular other (putative) sovereign, so that
the contingencies as to which states in fact make such contact is not determinative
of the status of any receiving entity. This is not state practice going to international
custom.
In any event, and more specifically, the sending out of papal representatives, and
the receiving of foreign representatives, has different functions in the case of the Holy
35
	 The treatment of consulates and diplomatic representatives is governed by international agreements
widely held to reflect age-old customary observance. But these obligations as to the protection of accredited
representatives (and of premises, documents and so on) supervene on the legitimacy of the diplomatic
relationship; they do not constitute that legitimacy. See discussion later in this article on the
question of customary law.
36
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 45.
37
	 Continuing ceremonial interaction is not inconsistent with the absence of international legal personality;
deposed monarchs may receive privileged treatment that bears the trappings of diplomacy and that
might be glossed or experienced as a form of continuing ‘recognition’ – e.g., Kaiser Wilhelm II in post-war
‘exile’. C. Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power (2009), at 349.
38
	 North Sea Continental Shelf (Federal Republic of Germany v.  Denmark), Merits, 20 February 1969, ICJ
Reports (1969) 3, para 77.
39
	 Asylum (Colombia v. Peru), Judgment, 20 November 1950, ICJ Reports (1950) 266.
40
	 The 1900 decision in The Paquete Habana stating that ‘custom or comity, courtesy or concession’ is insufficient
to provide evidence for legal obligation and thus to constitute law, itself endorsed an already century-old
distinction, of ‘comity’ versus ‘legal decision’, due to Lord Stowell. The contrast is between ‘an
act of grace’ and ‘a matter of right’. The Paquete Habana, 175 US SC Rep (1900) 677.
41
	Cismas, supra note 2, at 163; De la Brière, supra note 28, at 160.
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934 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
See or Vatican as compared to a secular state.42
As Pope Paul VI emphasized in 1970,
the relationships that arise are not between states but, rather, between states and the
Roman Catholic Church.43
The church can act as the ‘closest link between … nations
… so long as they trust her and … acknowledge her right to … freedom in fulfilling her
mission’.44
The Holy See ‘has a loyal dialogue with States … as an expert on human
nature’.45
The Roman Catholic Church’s role is seen here as a kind of arbitrator or
mediator, possessing unique skills and experience for that global role. Indeed, it is a
role that has been expressly played by popes and by papal officials over the centuries.
But an arbitrator or mediator is not one among equals. Its status is not reciprocal visà-vis
with those entities to which it offers these services.
The mission to reach out to a world of nations is a religious mission:46
‘By divine
mandate, the Pope has the duty of expounding the principles of divine law and …
of international law.’47
Representatives of the Holy See ‘help the local Churches to
strengthen their bonds with Us’.48
Canon law states that ‘[t]he principal duty of a pontifical
legate’ relates to unity of the universal church’.49
 Thus:
diplomatic relations of the pope are always carried on in light of [the] spiritual mission, hence
legates represent the Holy See – not the State of Vatican City; civil governments enter into relations
not with the State of Vatican City but with the Holy See itself [and] the title given representatives
of the Holy See (‘nuncios’ rather than ‘ambassadors’) is intended to underscore the
particular nature of their mission.50
Papal diplomats are ‘priests first and diplomats second’.51
Pastoral responsibilities of
the envoy in the foreign place might restrain a decision to withdraw that representation,
which is a consideration absent from the functioning of secular diplomats.52
Papal representatives continue to be given precedence over the representatives of
secular states. The Congress of Vienna provided that while members of the diplomatic
corps should assume a precedence rank among themselves based on the date
of appointment to their office, the rank to be assigned to the papal representative was
not affected by such temporal arrangements.53
These provisions were carried forward
42
	 The Vatican functions as a unique setting for international dialogue, detached from material interests
and instead enabling the application of ‘eternal principles of the truth’. Cardinale, supra note 17, at 214.
43
	 Pope Paul VI, Apologia for Papal Diplomacy (1970), cited as foreword in Cardinale, supra note 17, at xvii.
Azaredo himself made similar points on exceptionality. De la Brière, supra note 28, at 160.
44
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at xviii.
45
	 Similarly, the Pope Paul VI, Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum (1969), cited in Cardinale, supra note 17, at
312.
46
	 Thus, the sovereignty of the Holy See ‘is not restricted by a specific territory … its sovereignty … is exercised
throughout the world’. Araujo, supra note 9, at 329.
47
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 32.
48
	 Ibid., at xix.
49
	 Canon 364, reprinted in Coriden, Green and Heintschel, supra note 16, at 302 (emphasis added).
50
	 Commentary on Canon 362, ibid., at 302.
51
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 175.
52
	 Ibid., at 206. Canon 365 provides for the ‘special responsibility’ of the papal legate to a secular state to
also deal with state secular authorities; however, this interaction focuses on spiritual matters and is to be
informed by the counsel of local bishops. Coriden, Green and Heintschel, supra note 16, at 303.
53
	Martens, supra note 5, at 749; Coriden, Green and Heintschel, supra note 16, at 301.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 935
into the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.54
It is in the nature of
diplomacy, and of the legal inter-relationships involved, that these relationships are
reciprocal and, in formal terms, symmetrical. The papal system of diplomacy ‘is the
most ancient in existence’,55
but it is not diplomacy as international law recognizes
it. It is religious outreach,56
and internal church controversy over papal diplomacy
centres on matters of religion, such as the undermining of local church autonomy by
the papal representative.57
Oppenheim’s conclusion that Holy See envoys are not diplomatic
envoys – ‘not agents for international affairs of States, but exclusively agents
for the affairs of the Roman Catholic Church’58
– remains true a century later.
3  The Papal States from Charlemagne to 1870
A  From Founding to 1850: Under Siege
Territorial claims on behalf of the papacy to a central zone of the Italian peninsula
can be traced back at least to the time of Charlemagne’s father, Pepin III, king of the
Franks.59
In around 750, Pope Stephen appealed to Pepin for protection against the
depredations of the Kingdom of Lombardy to his north, since protection from the distant
eastern emperor was unrealistic.60
From around the middle of the 15th century
onwards, the papal states occupied more or less the same territory for some four hundred
years, straddling the peninsula, with the Pope as monarch.The Pope saw himself
as ‘suzerain of earthly princes and arbiter of Christendom’.61
However, there were
significant ruptures in that history, especially in the Napoleonic era.
In 1796, Napoleon invaded the papal states. A Roman republic was declared, and
other parts of the papal territory were occupied by Austrian and Neapolitan troops.
Pope Pius VI was transferred under arrest to France and died in captivity a few years
later. Pope Pius VII was elected in Venice under Austrian protection in 1800 and was
able to return to Rome, having reached an agreement with Napoleon, still no more
than First Consul of the French Republic. Pius VII took part in Napoleon’s self-coronation
as emperor in December 1804.62
In 1808, Napoleon re-occupied Rome, annexing
the remainder of what had been the papal states. Arrested and interned by Napoleon
in Fontainebleau, Pius VII signed an agreement making extensive concessions and,
54
	 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, 500 UNTS 95, Art. 16; Coriden, Green and Heintschel,
supra note 16, at 302.
55
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 39.
56
	 Unlike the papal envoy, the ‘secular envoy has no jurisdiction over the people of the country to which he
is accredited’. Ibid., at 162.
57
	 Ibid.
58
	Oppenheim, supra note 22, at 161.
59
	 A purported documentary basis for papal territorial sovereignty across the west of Europe, treated as
such for some seven centuries (the ‘Constantine Donation’), was identified as a forgery in 1439.
60
	 G. Procacci, History of the Italian People (1970), at 95; J. Kelly and M. Walsh, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes
(2006), at 90.
61
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 76
62
	 In 1803, Pius had made a concordat with the (Napoleonic) Italian Republic that included parts of the
pre-war papal states. Kelly and Walsh, supra note 60, at 307.
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936 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
in effect, renouncing title to the papal states.63
With Napoleon’s temporary imprisonment
on Elba and with his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Pius was able to return to
Rome once more.
The post-Napoleonic settlement under the Congress of Vienna64
reinstated
most of the former papal state territory in mainland Italy, along with other sovereign
entities (kingdoms and dukedoms) across the peninsula. Papal sovereignty
over Avignon and Venaissin, both in mainland France, came to an end. The
remainder of the former (Napoleonic) Italian kingdom was re-allocated to newly
defined states such as Lombard-Venetia in the north (under Austrian domina-
tion).65
Austrian military intervention was needed shortly afterwards to assist the
papacy in regaining control of its territory, and over the next fifty years, Austria
and France were in turn called upon to re-establish, or to defend, the territorial
domination of the Pope by force of arms, playing the protector role as had the
Franks in earlier times.
The papal territories were frequently host to foreign armies during the second
quarter of the century.66
During the period of European revolutions in 1848, Pope
Pius IX was forced to flee Rome,67
and in February 1849, following elections, a
Roman republic was declared.68
The republic approved a new constitution, formally
terminating papal rule. Church property was confiscated for redistribution. It could
be said that this marked the end of legitimate territorial aspirations of the Roman
Catholic Church in Italy as represented by the papacy. It marked the birth of a republic,
the suppression of which by force might be seen to constitute a ‘Baltic state’ situation,
so as to render illegitimate any future statehood arrangement maintained by
such force.69
And, indeed, the Roman republic was short lived.The republic’s military
defences under the command of Giuseppe Garibaldi were overpowered by French
troops despatched by Napoleon III, and Pius IX was enabled to return to Rome in
1850. Once more the papal supremacy over Rome and its hinterland was re-imposed
by the force of arms.
In early 1849, Rome and Venice had been independent and republican entities, at
that time the only such examples in Italy.70
By 1850, the papal state was a French
protectorate, and Venice had fallen to Austrian troops. Austrian forces now occupied
most of the north of Italy and dominated Piedmont. From the perspective of Britain,
the Pope was too reliant upon, and too friendly with, Austria. Any destabilization of
63
	 Pius VII retracted the Fontainebleau concessions prior to his release by Napoleon in 1814. In 1811,
Napoleon had named his heir-apparent at birth ‘King of Rome.’
64
	Crawford, supra note 11, at 221; G. Simpson, Great Powers and Outlaw States (2004), at 94.
65
	 Pope Gregory XVI was installed with the support of Metternich on behalf of Austria.
66
	 Kelly and Walsh, supra note 60, at 312.
67
	 Taking the accredited diplomatic corps with him. Cardinale, supra note 17, at 99.
68
	Procacci, supra note 60, at 303.
69
	 In which case, the events of 1870 might be seen as the ‘correction’ to this ‘Baltic’ state of affairs. But the
‘reverse Baltic’ is suggested by Fenwick, supra note 23, at 374, in the ‘legal fiction’ of military occupation
during 1870–1929, as in the Napoleonic era, such that ‘the Vatican becomes the successor in law of the
Papal States’.
70
	Procacci, supra note 60, at 304.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 937
the papal territory in central Italy threatened to give rise to even greater Austrian
dominance throughout the peninsula.71
B  1850–1870: Eclipse of the Papal States
In the 1850s, the papal territories contained a population of some three million
people.72
However, within the decade, a movement for national unification had
taken shape. By September 1860, with the exception of Rome and its region of
Lazio, the former papal state had become assimilated into the newly unified
Kingdom of Italy, which was declared in 1861.73
Rome remained under the protection
of the French army, reflecting a personal commitment of Emperor Napoleon
III. By 1866, when (thanks to Prussia’s defeat of Austria) the Venice region was
added into the expanding national entity under the leadership of Cavour, the whole
of the peninsula was unified under Victor Emanuel II, with the exception of two
enclaves: the residual papal state centred in Rome and San Marino.74
Pope Pius IX
and his advisors remained optimistic that either France or Austria would come to
their aid or that war in Europe would weaken the new Italian kingdom and hasten
a return to a three-fold division of the peninsula with a reduced Piedmontese kingdom
in the north, a Sicily/Naples entity in the south, and restored papal territories
once more stretching from coast to coast.75
Annexation of Rome by the unification movement had already been attempted.
Garibaldi’s forces were turned back by Italian troops in 1862.76
Following this episode,
Napoleon III and the Italian government reached an agreement in 1864 (the
September Convention) by which Italy would guarantee the inviolability of the papal
territory against attack and would change its national capital from Turin to Florence
to signal that Rome was not in its sights. The emperor agreed to withdraw the French
troops from Rome.The troops were withdrawn on schedule by 1866, but they returned
the next year when Garibaldi again threatened to march on Rome. However, with the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the defeat of the French forces at Sedan, French
troops were no longer available to defend the residual papal territory against the
threat of Italian military incursions. The inadequate papal military was overrun in
71
	 For Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary of the 1850s, the Pope’s temporal sovereignty was outdated
and in decline, and the concomitant decline in the transnational spiritual authority of the papacy
was ‘a good Thing for Europe’. Cited by J. Flint, Great Britain and the Holy See: The Diplomatic Relations
Question 1846–1852 (2003), at 125; see also Crawford, supra note 11, at 226. Palmerston’s views must
be seen in the context of British constitutional discrimination against the Catholic faith.
72
	Bathon, supra note 9, at 601.
73
	 Kelly and Walsh, supra note 60, at 314.
74
	 The continuing independence of San Marino, geographically enclosed by the new Kingdom of Italy, was
acceptable to the unification movement for political reasons. Formerly a vassal of the papal states, San
Marino was treated by Italy so to say as a ‘Baltic’ state, its previously suppressed statehood now restored.
The Convention of Good Neighbourship was agreed between Italy and San Marino in 1862. Crawford,
supra note 11, at l, 736.
75
	 D. Kertzer, Prisoner of the Vatican: The Pope’s Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State (2004),
at 18.
76
	 Ibid., at 14.
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938 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
September 1870.77
At Sedan, Napoleon III surrendered and became a prisoner of the
Prussians, thus ending France’s Second Empire, and a republic was declared in Paris.
It may therefore be that Italy’s obligations under the 1864 September Convention –
obligations that had been the topic of recent re-negotiations – ended at that point.78
In any event a plebiscite followed, by which the assimilation was confirmed.79
Given
that the residual papal state was assimilated into the Kingdom of Italy in this way,
its statehood was prima facie extinguished at that point, even if not in 1849. Italy’s
Foreign Minister Visconti argued in October 1870 that the exercise of temporal power
by the papacy had represented ‘the last debris remaining of the institutions of the
Middle Ages ... Political sovereignty that does not rest on popular consent, can no longer
exist’.80
It might be suggested that the papal entity was not extinguished but, rather, was
in suspension from 1870 onwards. Where a pre-existing state is forcibly assimilated
into another, the question will arise as to whether legitimate statehood has been suppressed,
in which case the duty of international law is to seek the reinstatement of
the victim state. Certainly, the papal authorities ‘refused to recognise the loss of temporal
power’ after 1870.81
However this ‘Baltic’ argument relies on the legitimacy of
the state of affairs ante bellum. Since the mid-20th century, if not before, legitimacy
would involve a plausible and continuing case for self-determination – for example,
as operationalized by the results of elections (if other than uncontested). While it had
been initially achieved by force of arms, the absorption of the papal territories into
Italy in 1870 was accompanied by a plebiscite that endorsed this process. A (retrospective)
self-determination argument supports the legitimacy of the Italian state’s
assimilationist position rather than the papal state’s sovereignty position. From 1870
onwards, then, there would appear to have been no more substance to a claim to statehood
(or some comparable status) for the residual papal entity than there was for the
Kingdom of Naples or the Republic of Venice, likewise absorbed into the new political
entity of a Kingdom of Italy.
As discussed later in this article, it has been argued that substantive international
legal personality remained in operation for the territory-free Holy See (that is to say,
77
	Procacci, supra note 60, at 330. In the days after the defeat and disbanding of the papal army, Italian
forces refrained from crossing the Tiber, thus leaving the river’s right bank (the Leonine City, of which
the Vatican was a section) under the Pope’s control. Pius IX requested that Italian troops cross the river
in order to police the area. Kertzer, supra note 75, at 60. The status of those Leonine City inhabitants in
terms of the subsequent Rome-wide plebiscite of all males was also problematic. Ibid., at 62.The Pope was
offered, but declined, authority over the Leonine City. Martens, supra note 5, at 732.
78
	 It has been suggested that the Italian seizing of Rome violated the September Convention. Crawford,
supra note 11, at 221. If France retained benefits under the Convention, specifically the prohibition of
Italian military incursion into Rome, then their first step would have been to protest at the Italian actions.
Favre, foreign minister of France under the new republic, ‘refused to publicly renounce’ the September
Convention, but he did not protest to Italy and, indeed, wrote privately: ‘[T]he temporal power has been a
scourge to the world, it is prostrate, we will not resurrect it.’ Kertzer, supra note 75, at 51.
79
	 The validity of the plebiscite is of course difficult to ascertain. Kertzer, supra note 75, at 63.
80
	 Ibid., at 308.
81
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 283. The papal consulate in Amsterdam remained open until 1876, and a
named papal consul remained in New York until his death in 1895. Ibid.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 939
the papal mission and its institutions). Legal personality is said to have survived on
the basis of a kind of religious legitimacy. It is certainly true that the evaporation of
temporal sovereignty did not diminish the papacy’s global aspirations. Defining himself
as a ‘prisoner of the Vatican’, Pius IX continued to communicate with the faithful
throughout Europe and beyond. The ‘imprisonment’ itself was largely self-imposed
and rhetorical – the Pope and his officials were free to move around Rome and, for
example, to convene a Vatican Council had they wished to do so – that is to say, in
the exercise of their spiritual function. The Italian government would have much preferred
it if they had done so.82
4  The Long Arm of Diplomacy, 1870–1929
Pope Pius IX and his entourage were left unmolested and at liberty within the Vatican
buildings after the events of September 1870. However, the geographical territory over
which the popes had recently ruled as quasi-dynastic monarchs, including the city
and the environs of Rome, became part of Italy. Indeed, from 1871, Rome became the
capital city of the kingdom. The immunities and the monetary compensation provided
or offered to the Vatican under the Italian Parliament’s Law of Guarantees appear to
confirm that the territory was entirely at the disposal of Italy, at least according to the
latter law.83
There was no armistice treaty between a defeated prince and a victorious
one. The Vatican ‘City’ had become merely municipal,84
like Florence and Venice, but
much smaller. As a former head of state, assuming this status to have been itself legitimate
(questionable given the events of 1849), Pope Pius IX might have been considered
entitled to certain continuing formal recognition in terms of the international law of his
time. However, the Pope was no longer a prince. Receiving lay representatives of foreign
states – where up until 1870 these foreign representatives had always been clerics – was
thus a provocation to the Italian state and a challenge to its temporal sovereignty.85
Pius’ successor Leo XIII, with no more territorial sovereignty or political authority
than Pius, played an active role in international diplomacy and as an arbitrator in
international disputes.86
Temporal restrictions on the mission of the Roman Catholic
Church were deplored.87
The VHS played no role in the first Hague International Peace
Conference of 1899. Pius X attempted to rely on international law when France ‘abrogated
a concordat by unilateral action’.88
Benedict XV, who was the Pope during World
82
	Kertzer, supra note 75, at 68.
83
	Procacci, supra note 60, at 331.
84
	 None of these acts by the assimilating state would have sufficed to ‘cure’ a ‘Baltic’ situation if such had
existed.
85
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 182.
86
	 Kelly and Walsh, supra note 60, at 316. Papal diplomacy flourished between 1870 and 1929 ‘free from
all material interests’. Cardinale, supra note 17, at 70.
87
	 In 1891, Leo issued the Encyclical Rerum Novarum in which he addressed problems of the working
classes, including their welfare needs, observing that the Roman Catholic Church ‘will intervene with all
the greater effect in proportion as her liberty of action is the more unfettered’. Encyclical Rerum Novarum
(1983), at 38.
88
	Fenwick, supra note 23, at 372.
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940 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
War I, unsuccessfully proposed a peace settlement between the central powers and the
Allies during the third year of that conflict.89
Again, there was no role for the Pope or
the VHS in the Versailles process or in the League of Nations.90
The Kingdom of Italy
had objected to the inclusion of the Holy See in the League of Nations because of the
possibility of territorial claims being launched in that forum.91
However, overseas diplomatic representation at the Vatican was on the rise. In the
reign of Benedict’s predecessor Pius X, there was already significant diplomatic representation,
and this increased under Benedict in the post-war years up to a total of
27 by 1922. For example, Britain was represented by a chargé d’affaires from 1915
onwards; Germany and Austria were also represented. Thus, when Pius XI became the
Pope in 1922, the papacy was continuing to enjoy diplomatic relations with many overseas
countries if not Italy, despite the loss of the territory that might previously have
sustained the legitimacy of such intercourse. From an international law perspective, the
question is what status if any was reflected or constituted by such liaisons.
The situation greeting the new Pope Pius XI in 1922, according to the argument
presented here, was therefore one in which some of the trappings of (pre-1870)
statehood remained but without any underlying legitimacy. In his first year in office,
despite taking the conciliatory step of imparting his first apostolic blessing to the public
in Italian Rome (instead of inside the Vatican buildings), Pius XI took a firm stand
on sovereignty and its political dimensions. Pius XI insisted that the sovereignty of
the Roman Catholic Church ‘extends beyond the confines of nations and states’ and
must never be ‘subject to any human authority or law whatsoever, even though that
law be one which proclaims certain guarantees for the liberty of the Roman Pontiff’.92
This statement of 1922 essentially re-affirmed the position of Pius IX in rejecting the
guarantees offered by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870. An indication was given that
the papacy might be moving towards acceptance of the political reality of a unified
Italy, for Pius states that Italy is ‘our own dear native land’ and that it does not have
‘anything to fear from the Holy See’. Pius XI’s re-evaluation of the Vatican’s position
in 1929 is discussed below.
As well as maintaining and enhancing the diplomatic effort, Pius XI entered into
express agreements with ‘some twenty states’.93
This raises the possibility that such
purportedly interstate relations might themselves constitute statehood for the VHS,
irrespective of the impediments outlined earlier. After all, the capacity to enter into
legal relations with pre-existing states (by means of such conventional instruments
as treaties) is one of the ‘traditional’ (Montevideo) earmarks of an independent and
89
	 Kelly and Walsh, supra note 60, at 320; in the event of a German/Austrian victory (and, hence, a defeat
for Italy), Benedict XV was anticipating the return of the papal states. In 1887, as secretary to papal
secretary of state Rampolla, Della Chiesa (as Benedict then was) was responsible for promulgating Pope
Leo XIII’s intransigent rejection of any reconciliation with the Italian government that fell short of the
full restoration of the papal territories. Rampolla’s view was that ‘a European war, and Italy’s defeat, was
the only way the Holy See would ever get Rome back’. Kertzer, supra note 75, at 257.
90
	Araujo, supra note 9, at 325.
91
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 230; Kunz, supra note 24, at 312.
92
	 Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (1922), cited in Martens, supra note 5, at 798.
93
	 Kelly and Walsh, supra note 60, at 322.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 941
sovereign entity. However, the circularity of ‘capacity’ as criterion is vicious.There are
various kinds of institutions with which states may enter into legal agreements, without
the existence of such agreements going to the status of such institutions as states
or state-like entities. The United Nations (UN), as such, the International Committee
of the Red Cross, international corporations or charitable organizations, and so on
may all be legitimate partners (with states) in such agreements.94
Generally speaking, in contemporary commentaries recognition (by pre-existing
states) is not considered a sufficient basis for statehood because of the circular form of
argument this would entail and the absurdities that would arise if reliance were placed
on this in either a logical or a causal sense.95
Similarly, there is no reason to think
that an entity that is not otherwise considered legitimate as an independent entity
(for example, because of a self-determination argument96
) could attain legitimacy
merely on the basis of a set of bilateral arrangements. Of course, this is not to deny
that certain kinds of international agreements might suffice to establish independent
statehood for a new entity. The principality of Albania (1913–1919) was thus estab-
lished.97
Directly involving Italy, free city status was established for Fiume (Rijeka) in
modern-day Croatia in 1919 and for Trieste in 1947.98
None of these examples, all
of which were short-lived, seems to assist an argument for international legal status
in the VHS. Nor do they offer support to the claim that an agreement between
the Kingdom of Italy and the incumbent Pope might be capable of giving birth to, or
bestowing legitimacy upon, an independent entity within the environs of the city of
Rome. Yet this is what the agreements of 1929 are purported to do. The argument of
this article, therefore, is that in 1929, if there was an international legal person called
the Holy See or any other facet of the VHS, the status of that person was paper thin.
5  The Lateran Pacts of 1929
One specific two-party agreement, which is more precisely a set of agreements, therefore
needs to be examined more closely.99
In 1929, agreements were entered into after
extended negotiations between Benito Mussolini and the papacy,100
under which a
94
	 Concordats are in any case a somewhat special matter. According to Oppenheim, ‘[t]he so-called
Concordats – that is, treaties between the Holy See and States with regard to matters of the Roman
Catholic Church – are not international treaties, although analogous treatment is usually given to them.
Even … when the Pope was the head of a State, such Concordats were not concluded with the Papal
States, but with the Holy See and the Pope as representatives of the Roman Catholic Church’. Oppenheim,
supra note 22, at 161.
95
	Crawford, supra note 11, at 21.
96
	Duursma, supra note 12, at 418; the reference by Araujo, supra note 9, at 329, to ‘self-determination’
seems gratuitous.
97
	Crawford, supra note 11, at 447.
98
	 Ibid.
99
	Duursma, supra note 12, at 389. Conciliation Treaty between the Holy See and Italy (Lateran Pacts)
1929, English version available at www.vaticanstate.va/content/dam/vaticanstate/documenti/leggi-edecreti/Normative-Penali-e-Amministrative/LateranTreaty.pdf
(last visited November 2015).
100
	 KingVictorEmmanuelIIIwastheheadof state,onwhosebehalf forItalythepactsweresignedbyMussolini.
Bathon, supra note 9, at 603. The Pope’s representative was Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri.
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942 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
rapprochement between the Italian state (the Kingdom of Italy) and the Holy See was
articulated. After nearly sixty years of attempted independence, during which time
popes refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the united Italy that surrounded them,
powers and guarantees were offered that Pius XI accepted in return for assurances
over the temporal aspirations of the religious organization of which he was leader.
Italy agreed to treat the VHS, with its newly defined territorial basis as Vatican City,
as possessing status independent of Italy. In terms of the interests of the parties, the
Lateran Pacts were a brilliant success. The Roman Catholic Church was converted
from a potential fifth column within Mussolini’s Italy to an integral component of
the state.101
At the same time, the church resumed its control over spiritual practice,
personnel and property throughout Italy, consolidated its immunities from undesirable
state interference and secured a territorial base, complete with sustainable infrastructure,
from which to continue its mission beyond, as well as within, the shores
of Italy. The papacy achieved all this without taking on the responsibilities for a civil
population.
Pope Pius on behalf of the VHS recognized that Rome was part of the Kingdom
of Italy. The VHS would limit its global aspirations to the spiritual realm: the Holy
See would thenceforth ‘remain extraneous to all temporal disputes between states’.102
Reciprocally, Mussolini declared Catholicism to be the state religion of Italy, an
extremely significant concession on the Fascist regime’s part. The assurances over
the sanctity of the Vatican premises as such were in substance the same as those
extended in 1870. The Holy See was now granted ‘full ownership, exclusive and absolute
dominion and sovereign jurisdiction’ over the Vatican City.103
Several aspects were
new in 1929, in addition to the new political landscape of fascist Italy. The extent of
the control now granted to the Roman Catholic Church over church issues, including
personnel and property (including buildings) throughout Italy, was a great coup. In
the Concordat that formed part of the Lateran Pacts, the church’s influence over family
law and religious education in Italy was affirmed.
Commensurate with this recognition by the Kingdom of Italy of the independent
authority of the Roman Catholic Church within Italy was the declaration by the
Italian state of an internationally independent status for the VHS. ‘Indisputable sovereignty
in international matters’ was guaranteed to the Holy See. While it was a significant
new step in the context of Italy, this guarantee was consistent with the approach
of the Law of Guarantees, at the time of the initial annexation, in its commitment not
to interfere with or trammel the worldwide religious leadership and communication
of the papacy, sending representatives to, and receiving representatives from, foreign
sovereigns.
What must now be considered is the status of the Lateran declaration regarding
Vatican City as an independent entity. It is certainly the case that a new state can be
101
	 Under Article XX of the Concordat, bishops were to be required to swear their respect to the king and to
the government of Italy.
102
	 Article 24; see Kunz, supra note 24, at 313. It was implied that the Kingdom of Italy need not feel threatened
by any future papal involvement in an anti-Italy alliance. De la Brière, supra note 28, at 157.
103
	Robertson, supra note 1, at 72.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 943
set up by a treaty.104
It may also be the case that there is ‘nothing illogical about a
State being a party to the treaty that constitutes or reconstitutes it’.105
However, this
does not seem to cover the case where the party in question consists of the head and
senior officials of a religious order who have been allowed to retain occupancy of their
headquarters while refusing to recognize the legitimacy either of the national state
that surrounds them or of the plebiscite that confirmed the termination of the former
political arrangements.106
The purported independent entity – Vatican City under the sovereignty of the Holy
See – was endowed or constituted by the pre-existing state (Italy) on whose territory
the purported state was defined. Comparison with the Bantustans of apartheid South
Africa is therefore instructive. In both cases, a non-democratic national regime defined
a small portion(s) of their state’s territory as having independent status. The Rome
arrangement emerged from the dialogue of two strong leaders who both saw benefit
– both internationally and locally – in collaboration. Similarly, the state-recognized
political leaders of the Bantustans saw benefit in their own form of collaboration,
just as the leaders of apartheid South Africa did. The state of South Africa exercised
control over the Bantustans notwithstanding some degree of autonomy over internal
administration, which was not inconsistent with their ‘puppet’ status.107
Claims to
self-determination were also held to be bogus. However, existing states may enter into
all sorts of arrangements with their neighbours without sacrificing statehood, including
extreme dependence in practical, political, or military senses, and existing states
manifest many degrees of adequacy of self-determination.108
Other scenarios might
be entertained.109
The political decisions of the Italian government would not suffice to generate or to
provide evidence for international legal status for the VHS. Given the arguments earlier
in this article, the agreements entered into between Mussolini and the Pope were
agreements within the Italian national polity. Definitions agreed upon by the parties
104
	 States and internationalized territories ‘are quite often created pursuant to treaty provisions’. Crawford,
supra note 11, at 105. Examples would include Cyprus, set up by multilateral treaty in 1960. Ibid., at 28.
Libya was established as a state by the UN.
105
	 Ibid., at 106. Thus, Austria was a party to the (multilateral) State Treaty for the Re-establishment of an
Independent and Democratic Austria (Austria, France, Soviet, United Kingdom, USA) 1955, 217 UNTS
223, which re-established Austria’s independence, along with the United Kingdom, France, the USA, and
the Soviet Union, and Cyprus was party, with Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, to the (multilateral)
1960 treaty.
106
	 A bilateral agreement between part of a state and the whole state could not be considered an instrument
generating duties and obligations at the international level.
107
	 ‘Transkei’ had ‘a relatively coherent territory’ but was economically and politically dependent on South
Africa. British courts dealt with ‘Ciskei’ as a subordinate local government of South Africa. Crawford,
supra note 11, at 344.
108
	 The factors weighing in favour of VHS independence from Italy are political independence as an actor
on the world stage; a degree, difficult to estimate, of financial independence; and increasing legal independence
under religious control. Cismas, supra note 2, at 173; see also Bathon, supra note 9, at 617;
Duursma, supra note 12, at 415.
109
	 Foreign consulates and embassies are routinely granted special protective status by the host state. This
practice is governed by international custom and convention; it does not represent a mere act of courtesy.
Analogy with the VHS seems strained. See also Duursma, supra note 12, at 389.
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944 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
to those agreements said nothing about international status under international law.
The arrangements were merely municipal. Municipal laws cannot overrule international
regulations in their proper sphere, and although municipal acts and conduct
may contribute to the development of state practice at the international level, they
cannot in themselves constitute new international entities.110
Even major devolutions
of political authority involving, for example, the creation of representative regional
parliamentary bodies (such as in Scotland or Chechnya) do not give rise to alterations
in international status for Scotland, Chechnya, the United Kingdom or the Russian
Federation. Short of the agreed parting of the ways represented by the splitting of
Czechoslovakia into two entities, any redefinition of territory by the state is of only
municipal significance.111
The Kingdom of Italy’s defining of Vatican City as being independent of itself was
expressly accompanied by the de facto retention of Italian nationality for the whole
population of Italy, including the whole population of Rome.112
There was no division
of population. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church’s leadership would hardly have
wanted to take up again (as before 1870) the onerous and risky business of looking
after the welfare of a population, especially given the changes in complexity of society
since that time.113
In any case, the Lateran Pacts were of highly circumscribed
status, for ‘[n]o system of government or treaty can restrict or control the spiritual
ministry which belongs to the papacy … by its own right, by divine disposition …
which it has exercised in international life uninterruptedly for nearly two thousand
years’.114
The municipal (Italian) nature of the Lateran arrangements is illustrated by the status
of Italian law within Vatican City, available as a default, so long as it is not incompatible
with Vatican regulations. This is in addition to those Italian laws expressly
provided under the Vatican Constitution, such as laws on motorcars and contagious
diseases as well as the Commercial Code. Overall, there seems to be no reason to place
any international legal weight on the Lateran Pacts, and no significant international
legal status for the VHS (for example, statehood or something approaching it) can
be derived from it. The Pope should not be treated as a head of state, thereby subject
to the same duties and enjoying the same privileges, rights, or immunities as a
head of state on the basis of the treaty. By the same logic, Vatican obligations indicated
in the treaty – such as the papal declaration of non-involvement in matters
110
	 In the 1990s, the government of France attempted unsuccessfully to define a part of its territory (inside
Paris-Orly airport) as ‘international’ such that it did not in that place recognize an obligation to protect
certain persons seeking asylum. J. Hathaway, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (2005), at
321.
111
	 The parallel with emerging statehood for a territory previously administered by the UN appears inexact.
Crawford, supra note 11, at 231; Robertson, supra note 1, at 67.
112
	 De la Brière, supra note 28, at 128. It may also be noted that ‘[t]he Italians gave up on internationalism
altogether under Mussolini’. Mégret, ‘The Rise and Fall of “International Man”’, in P. Singh and B. Mayer
(eds), Critical International Law (2014) 223, at 236.
113
	 As in 1870, see note 77 in this article. Vatican City was not so much a minimal territory for the needs of
the VHS as a maximum territory that it wished to handle.
114
	Cardinale, supra note 17, at 127.
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The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex 945
political – cannot currently be relied on against the VHS at an international level as if
entered into by a state.
6  Conclusions: A Stark Choice?
In the over 85 years since the signing of the Lateran Pacts, the VHS has been involved
in numerous international activities and forums.115
In 1964, the VHS (under the
term Holy See) sought and was granted permanent observer status at the UN General
Assembly (UNGA), which was apparently a unilateral decision of Secretary-General
U Thant.116
In the first papal address to the UNGA in 1965, Pope Paul VI made reference
to the Holy See’s position as an ‘expert in humanity’ as a basis for its UN role.117
In 2004, the UNGA resolved that the Holy See as an observer state should be entitled
to participate in debates and to have its communications included as official in UNGA
documents and that the seating provided in the UNGA Hall (six seats) should be so
arranged that the Holy See immediately follows member state representatives and
thus heads the observer representatives.118
This article has referred selectively to recent and contemporary debate over the
international legal personality of the entity variously referred to as the Holy See or the
Vatican City. In terms of chronology, the focus has been on the period from the fall of
the papal states to the Lateran Pacts. Much has happened since, but the logic of the
above analysis is that the international status going to something like statehood of
what is here inclusively called the VHS has not changed since 1870.
At this point, the important contribution of Ioana Cismas needs to be further
discussed. For Cismas, there exists a ‘construct’, comprising the peculiar combination
of Holy See and Vatican City, that thereby achieved a status approaching
or resembling statehood in 1929 and retains that (sui generis) status in the present
day. The single international personality is ‘anchored in two sources: international
custom recognizing the religious legitimacy of the Holy See, and the
resemblance of statehood conferred upon the construct by the Lateran Treaty’.119
To the extent that the two components can be separated, neither achieves even the
semblance of statehood, although the Holy See retains its historic international
legal personality.120
Cismas and the present author are in agreement in rejecting the view, attributed
by Cismas to the Holy See as the ‘dual personality scenario’, according to which both
a Vatican City State and the Holy See as such are separate, although very closely
115
	 On events since 1929 reference should be made to the comprehensive review and analysis recently presented
in Cismas, supra note 2, including domestic court proceedings worldwide.
116
	Robertson, supra note 1, at 98; previous correspondence in 1957 with UN Secretary-General
Hammarskjold had indicated that the UN status of Vatican City derived from the status of the Roman
Catholic Church. Bathon, supra note 9, at 627.
117
	Araujo, supra note 9, at 315.
118
	 GA Res 58/314, 16 July 2004. See Martens, supra note 5, at 758.
119
	 Cismas, ‘Introductory Note to Committee on the Rights of the Child Concluding Observations on the
Second Periodic Report of the Holy See’, 53 International Legal Materials (2014) 580
120
	Cismas, supra note 2, at 184.
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946 EJIL 26 (2015), 927–946
interlinked, international actors.121
Further, and although Cismas places some weight
on cumulative state practice since 1929 in consolidating a status, Cismas and the
present author are in agreement that no event or practice since 1929 has materially
altered the central issues. The present author, however, demurs from Cismas’
claims concerning a construct with unitary personality formed by the combination of
Vatican City and Holy See. As previously noted, Cismas argues that sufficient evidence
exists for a status resembling statehood but that the rights thus attributed have not
been accompanied by the engagement with state-like responsibilities.122
The practicalities
of this point (that it is important and urgent for these obligations to be engaged)
need to be considered for it may be somewhat optimistic. It might be said that, as demonstrated
by the recent Vatican response to issues of children’s rights,123
there is no
reason to believe that anything other than slow, selective and ultimately unreliable
acceptance of international responsibilities is to be anticipated. Every new incumbent
of the papacy can change policy. Somewhat more provocative is the proposal that a
21st-century recognition of state-like legitimacy for a VHS construct is a kind of new
Law of Guarantees proffered by the international community in the hope that international
responsibilities will finally be engaged.
The VHS is the institutional embodiment of one of many alternative, faith-based
international movements, ranging from sects, to the great world religions, to newer
faiths. Their international legal status should be the same. There are various ways
in which the Roman Catholic Church and its officers should be subject to international
law as well as to the laws of various municipalities around the world. Individual
Catholics have been the subject of discrimination and persecution in many places, and
many leaders of Catholic communities have been courageous advocates of individual
and collective rights. However, the many benevolent functions of the Roman Catholic
Church worldwide – of the papacy and of its officers – would all survive the extinction
of state-like international legal status for the VHS.
How might this all look to the leadership of that extraordinary institution? Cismas
and the present author might be seen to represent between them two alternative
analyses, and, hence, two alternative international futures, for what is in this article
called the VHS complex and is called by Cismas ‘[t]he Holy See-Vatican State-Like
Construct’. As alternative analyses, the arguments of Cismas and the present author
constitute a stark choice for the papacy in the 21st century. Either the responsibilities
that go with statehood must be fully embraced or the immunities that go with statehood
must be fully relinquished. The analysis presented above supports the second
of these options. What is needed now, in other words, is an appropriately Franciscan
gesture of humility.
121
	 Ibid., at 185.
122
	 Ibid., at 237.
123
	Cismas, supra note 119.
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