Independence Day.

I don't know whether or not the Vatican celebrates its Independence Day 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 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, 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.

Pope Pius IX, remembered primarily for the July 18, 1870 declaration of papal infallibility, 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, Plus X, and Benedict XV, 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 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 ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.