Q: Could you please clarify what we mean by “the Vatican”? For example, we say that the Pope lives in the Vatican, but we also say that some new document has been issued by the Vatican. What exactly is the Vatican?
As you suggest in your question, the phrase “the Vatican” refers to a number of different but related realities.
When we say that the Pope lives in the Vatican, we are referring to the buildings and land occupied by the central government of the Church in Rome. This is more properly called the Vatican City State. It is in reality a sovereign state, the smallest in the world, with an area of just over 40 hectares. Some one thousand people normally live in the Vatican.
The Vatican is best known as the territory where St Peter’s Basilica is located, but it also has numerous other buildings, including the papal apartments, offices of the Roman Curia, the Vatican Museum, the Paul VI Audience Hall, the Vatican Gardens, etc.
The Vatican City State also has rights over other buildings in Rome, including the major basilicas of St John the Lateran, St Mary Major and St Paul Outside the Walls, office buildings for various Congregations of the Roman Curia and the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo, southeast of Rome. While the Pope is the head of the government, the Vatican City State is administered by the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City. The Pope thus has two major roles: he is the visible head of the Catholic Church, and he is also the head of the Vatican City State.
When we say that the Vatican is a sovereign state, we mean just that. It has its own postage stamps, security personnel, etc. But of course it is completely surrounded by Italy, or more properly by the city of Rome, and it depends on Italy for most of its services.
The Vatican City State was established as recently as 1929, as part of the Lateran Treaty that regularised the relationship of the Holy See with the government of Italy. The Pope had, of course, been a temporal sovereign, presiding over the extensive Papal States that occupied a large part of present-day Italy until the fall of those States in 1870.
The Lateran Treaty recognised the Vatican City State as an independent political entity, with its own small territory, that guaranteed the freedom of the Church to function independently of any other State.
If someone writes to the Pope, or to anyone else living or working in the Vatican, the last line of the address is not Italy, but Vatican City. And the last letters of Vatican websites are “va”.
When we say that the Vatican has released a document or a statement, we are referring to the Pope and the offices that assist him in governing the Catholic Church. A more correct term for this is the Holy See.
Canon 361 of the Code of Canon Law says that “the terms Apostolic See or Holy See mean not only the Roman Pontiff, but also, unless the contrary is clear from the nature of things or from the context, the Secretariat of State, the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church, and the other Institutes of the Roman Curia.” These offices are also known as the Roman Curia.
For information, the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church has now been incorporated into the Secretariat of State as its Second Section, and it deals with relations with civil governments.
Even though a particular document may come from one or another of the offices of the Curia, as for example the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, these documents are always deemed to have come from the Pope himself.
This is clarified in Canon 360: “The Supreme Pontiff usually conducts the business of the universal Church through the Roman Curia, which acts in his name and with his authority for the good and for the service of the Churches.”
The Curia includes many offices, the principal ones being those mentioned above, nine Congregations, three Tribunals, and eleven Pontifical Councils.