Independence Day.I don't know whether or not the Vatican celebrates its Independence Day Independence Day: see Fourth of July. with pyrotechnics like we celebrate ours here in the U.S. every July 4, but fireworks or not, the 11th day of February marks the anniversary of the 1929 Lateran Lateran (lăt`ərən), name applied to a group of buildings of SE Rome facing the Piazza San Giovanni. They are on land once belonging to the Laterani; it was presented to the Church by Constantine. The Lateran basilica is the cathedral of Rome, the pope's church, the first-ranking church of the Roman Catholic Church. Pacts between the Catholic Church and Italy that officially established the 109 acres of Vatican City as independent of Italy and recognized the papacy as its sovereign. Its signatories, the long-forgotten Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Gasparri and ever-remembered Benito Mussolini, inked agreements that ended more than a half century of discord between church and state. This agreement settled a dispute dating back to the 19th century when the Papal States Papal States, Ital. Lo Stato della Chiesa, from 754 to 1870 an independent territory under the temporal rule of the popes, also called the States of the Church and the Pontifical States. The territory varied in size at different times; in 1859 it included c.16,000 sq mi (41,440 sq km) extending north-south on the Italian peninsula, from the Adriatic Sea and lower course of the Po River to the Tyrrhenian Sea, thus including the present regions of Latium,, some 17,218 square miles of land across the middle of the country, and eventually the city of Rome, were seized by the troops of Victor Emmanuel II. As the boot-shaped land moved toward national unification, the Papal States stood in the way of the Italian version of Manifest Destiny manifest destiny, belief held by many Americans in the 1840s that the United States was destined to expand across the continent, by force, as used against Native Americans, if necessary. The controversy over slavery further fueled expansionism, as the North and South each wanted the nation to admit new states that supported its section's economic, political, and slave policies. By the end of the 19th cent.. Pope Pius IX Pius IX, 1792–1878, pope (1846–78), an Italian named Giovanni M. Mastai-Ferretti, b. Senigallia; successor of Gregory XVI. He was cardinal and bishop of Imola when elected pope. For two years he pursued a progressive policy in governing the Papal States and granted a constitution. However, in 1848 rioting drove him from Rome to Gaeta, and he returned (1850) to be supported in power only by the forces of Napoleon III., remembered primarily for the July 18, 1870 declaration of papal infallibility infallibility (ĭnfăl'əbĭl`ətē), in Christian thought, exemption from the possibility of error, bestowed on the church as a teaching authority, as a gift of the Holy Spirit. It has been believed since the earliest times to be guaranteed in such scriptural passages as John 14.16,17., protested the seizure of the Papal States, though not infallibly. He penned a mighty strong encyclical excommunicating everyone who ordered or participated in the seizure of the Papal States. And Plus IX rejected the Italian parliament's 1871 Law of Guarantees, which would have given the papacy financial renumeration for the property but not independent-nation status. This conflict between Italy and the Vatican became known as "The Roman Question" and remained unsettled through the pontificates of Pius IX, Leo XIII Leo XIII, popeLeo XIII, 1810–1903, pope (1878–1903), an Italian (b. Carpineto, E of Rome) named Gioacchino Pecci; successor of Pius IX. Ordained in 1837, he earned an excellent reputation as archbishop of Perugia (1846–77), and was created cardinal in 1853., Plus X, and Benedict XV Benedict XV, 1854–1922, pope (1914–22), an Italian (b. Genoa) named Giacomo della Chiesa; successor of Pius X. He was made archbishop of Bologna in 1907 and cardinal in 1914, two months before his election as pope. His policy in World War I was one of the strictest neutrality, and he had the respect of all belligerents. He originated several proposals for peace., each choosing to be a highly symbolic but historically inaccurate "prisoner in the Vatican." Not one of them even ventured out to the papal spa, the Castle of Gandolfo in the nearby Alban mountains.But Plus XI, elected pope in 1922, decided enough was enough. He began negotiations that would eventually recognize the reality that the Papal States, Rome included, no longer belonged to the church. It would also end the self-proclaimed status and behavior of popes as prisoners in the Vatican. Unofficial negotiations began in 1926 and concluded almost three years later with the signing of three documents known as the Lateran Pacts. Today, 75 years later, the present pope, regretfully now a prisoner in his own body, definitely has not been a prisoner in the Vatican. His globetrotting has brought the symbolism of the papacy to almost every nook and cranny on earth. The geography of the Papal States now seems paltry by comparison to the boundary-breaking travels we have come to expect. This papacy has not been without its fireworks, though, from persecuted theologians to women wanting ordination, from canonization canonization (kăn'ənĭzā`shən), in the Roman Catholic Church, process by which a person is classified as a saint. It is now performed at Rome alone, although in the Middle Ages and earlier bishops elsewhere used to canonize. of controversial saints to new orders about proper Eucharistic posture. But on February 11, Vatican Independence Day, a pyrotechnic display over St. Peter's Basilica might well be a welcome event for all those who live and work there. PETER GILMOUR (Pgilmou@wpo.it.luc.edu) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago. |
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