Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 117

The pope’s home is Vatican City, an independent nation since the Lateran Agreement of 1929, when Italy recognized its sovereignty. Vatican City covers only 0.2 square mile (108.7 acres), has fewer than a thousand inhabitants, and rests in the middle of Rome.

After 300 years of Roman persecution, the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in A.d. 313 with the Edict of Milan and thus formally ended the state-sponsored persecutions of the Christians. In A.d. 321, he donated the imperial property of the Lateran Palace to the bishop of Rome, which began a trend of donating property in recompense for all the land and possessions that the Romans took from the early Christians during the pagan era.

The donation of large estates stopped around A.d. 600, but 154 years later, King Pepin (the Short) of the Franks (who was also the father of Charlemagne) issued the Donation of A.d. 754: The pope would govern the territory of central Italy (16,000 square miles). From 754 to 1870, Vatican City was part of the Papal States, also known as Patrimonium Sancti Petri (the Patrimony of St. Peter). During the unification of Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the two men most responsible for creating the Kingdom and modern nation of Italy in 1870, seized the Papal States and, for all practical purposes, ended the secular rule of the popes. Today, Vatican City is the smallest independent nation in the world. Ironically, it also has the largest number of embassies and ambassadors around the globe. Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, built a radio for Pope Pius XI; thus Vatican Radio began in 1931. Now, besides a radio and short-wave antennae, the Vatican has television, Internet programming, and a Facebook page. Pope Francis even uses his own Twitter account.

The only real citizens of Vatican City, aside from the pope, are the cardinals who live in Rome, directors of other Vatican offices, and full-time diplomats who work for the Holy See (the pope and the various offices of Church government in the Vatican). These diplomats, clergy and laity alike, come from countries all over the world. They still retain their own nationality and citizenship but are given a Vatican passport while employed to represent the Vatican. Originally sent to Rome in 1506, about 107 Swiss guards protect the pope, decorating the Piazza (outdoor square where people gather) with their colorful costumes. In addition, plain-clothes Swiss guards, with electronic surveillance and sophisticated weapons, also keep a close eye on the Holy Father, especially since the attempted assassination of St. John Paul II in 1981.

Since 1447 popes had lived in the Apostolic Palace, which is nothing more than rooms at the Vatican where the Holy Father lives, eats, and does business. Pope Francis chose to move (actually stay) in the hotel used by the cardinals during the 2013 conclave that elected him pope. The Domus Sanctae Marthae was built in 1996 by St. John Paul II to accommodate the needs of the electors as the Sistine Chapel had become too antiquated for living quarters.