The Vatican

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City

The Vatican is labeled as several things, a city, a state, a bank, a church, a government, a business and a crime syndicate. Let’s not jump the gun straight away back throughout history there are numerous things that the Vatican has endorsed and also played a part in, but we will relay on a few in today’s episode.

Vatican 

You probably have heard about the Vatican, but do you really know what the Vatican is? It isn’t just some building the pope resides in. It is much much more. 

Most people might not know this but the Vatican is a city. Vatican City. 

Encircled by a 2-mile border with Italy, Vatican City is an independent city-state that covers just over 100 acres. Vatican City is governed as an absolute monarchy with the pope at its head. The Vatican mints its own euros, prints its own stamps, issues passports and license plates, operates media outlets and has its own flag and anthem. One government function it lacks: taxation. Museum admission fees, stamp and souvenir sales, and contributions generate the Vatican’s revenue.

It has a population of around 800-900 people. In both size/area and population, Vatican City is the smallest sovereign state in the world. There is no capital of Vatican City as the city is the state itself. 

Vatican City is not a democracy and is not a member of the United Nations. It is not a member of the EU although the official currency is the Euro. Euro coins representing the Vatican are printed at the mint in Rome. 

Pope Francis is the current Bishop of Rome and is head of state of Vatican City. The Pope is not considered a king although he is the sovereign ruler of both Vatican City and of the Holy See.

So why was the Vatican City established?

To comprehend this we have to understand what the Papal States were, in essence they were states of the Church. A series of territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope.

Italy wanted to make Rome the capital of their country and they conquered the Papal States.

In that period the Pope refused to acknowledge the existence of the Kingdom of Italy and he was telling the Catholics of Italy and the ones around the world that he was a prisoner of the Kingdom of Italy. The popes changed, but the story remained the same.

In comes Mussolini chippy chop here’s some dosh, keep your own little shit going on here but recognize Italy and you can remain neutral in the schemes of politics and war. 

As mentioned previously the Pope is the ruler of the Holy See ( The Holy See is the entity that governs both the actual territory of Vatican City and the entirety of Roman Catholicism around the world, which includes some 1.2 billion followers.) So from this info we can see that the Vatican is more than just the pope’s house.

If you look through history you can see that there always seems to be constant new sectors of Christianity. We have the initial divide which resulted in the Catholic and Orthodox churches which debated on a couple of differences, but the main one being supreme authority to the Pope. The next sector to split from the Catholics were the Lutherans/Protestants which like before had disputes with the Pope as he was offering Indulgences which were a way to be pardoned of your sins. However, in this case it was to fund the rebuild of the Basilica which made Martin Luther write the 95 theses which stated that the catholic church was finding a way to pu...