🇻🇦 Vatican City

National Flag

Geography & Borders

Italy

Introduction & Background

Vatican City (/ˈvætɪkən/ⓘ), officially Vatican City State (Template:Lang-it;e Template:Lang-la),fg is an independent city-state, microstate and enclave within Rome, Italy.1314 It became independent from Italy in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty, and it is a distinct territory under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See, itself a sovereign entity of international law, which maintains the city state's temporal, diplomatic, and spiritual independence.h15 With an area of 49 hectares (121 acres)b and a 2019 population of about 453,10 it is the smallest state in the world both by area and population.16 As governed by the Holy See, Vatican City State is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state ruled by the Pope who is the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church.317 The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergy of various origins. After the Avignon Papacy (1309–1377) the popes have mainly resided at the Apostolic Palace within what is now Vatican City, although at times residing instead in the Quirinal Palace in Rome or elsewhere. The Vatican is also a metonym for the Holy See.

The Holy See dates back to early Christianity and is the principal episcopal see of the Catholic Church, which has approximately 1.329billion baptized Catholics in the world as of 2018update in the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches.18 The independent state of Vatican City, on the other hand, came into existence on 11 February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, which spoke of it as a new creation,19 not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756–1870), which had previously encompassed much of central Italy.