The Holy See

Canon 361: A Definition That Goes Beyond the Pope’s Person

The 1983 Code of Canon Law, promulgated by John Paul II through the apostolic constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges and in force since 27 November 1983, defines the term with rigorous juridical precision:

“The term Holy See or Apostolic See as used in this Code means 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.” Code of Canon Law, canon 361^[6]

This definition has one major practical consequence: when a document, a treaty or a declaration mentions the “Holy See”, it denotes not only the pope’s person but the whole central governing apparatus of the Church acting in his name, what international law calls a single moral person, just as a State is a moral person distinct from the individuals who compose it at any given moment.

Canon 113: A Moral Personality “by Divine Ordinance”

More fundamental still, canon 113 § 1 specifies the origin of this juridical personality:

“The Catholic Church and the Apostolic See have the character of a moral person by divine ordinance itself.” Code of Canon Law, canon 113 § 1^[7]

This point is theologically decisive. Most subjects of international law, a State, an intergovernmental organisation, derive their juridical personality from a human recognition: a constitution, a treaty, a vote of admission. The Holy See, according to the Catholic doctrine codified in this canon, derives its own from a divine institution prior to any human act: the mission entrusted by Christ to Peter and his successors. States therefore do not create the Holy See’s personality when they recognise it diplomatically; they acknowledge an already constituted juridical reality, exactly as article 2 of the 1929 Lateran Treaty formulates it for pontifical sovereignty itself: “Italy recognises the sovereignty of the Holy See in the international field as an inherent attribute of its nature.”^[8]

Four Realities That Everyday Language Too Often Confuses

Everyday usage often treats “Vatican”, “Holy See”, “Roman Curia” and “Catholic Church” as interchangeable synonyms. Canon law and international law nevertheless distinguish four precise juridical objects, and confusing them regularly produces substantive errors in the press and even in some international-relations textbooks^[9].

The practical rule followed by pontifical diplomacy since 1929 has been constant: political, diplomatic and doctrinal treaties fall to the Holy See; technical treaties (postal, monetary, telecommunications) fall to Vatican City State^[10]. For the complete history of this territorial distinction and of its creation in 1929, see The Creation of Vatican City State (1929).

The sedes Petri in Scripture and Tradition

Catholic doctrine traces the authority of Peter’s See back to a word of Christ himself, reported by the evangelist Matthew:

“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” |> Matthew 16:18-19

This promise is completed, in John’s Gospel, by the threefold pastoral mandate entrusted to Peter after the Resurrection, “Feed my lambs […] Tend my sheep […] Feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17), which Catholic theology reads as the institution of a universal office of government transmitted to Peter’s successors on the episcopal see of Rome, where the apostle exercised his ministry and suffered martyrdom under Nero. It is this unbroken continuity, not the existence of a territory, that constitutes, for Catholic doctrine, the first and permanent foundation of the Holy See’s sovereignty.

The Vacant See: Unbroken Juridical Continuity

A subject of law founded on an office, rather than on a territory or a dynasty, must be able to pass without rupture through the moments when that office is materially vacant, a pope’s death or resignation, until his successor’s election. The Code of Canon Law settles this case precisely:

“When the Roman See is vacant or entirely impeded, no innovation is to be made in the governance of the universal Church; but the special laws enacted for these circumstances are to be observed.” Code of Canon Law, canon 335^[11]

During this period known as sede vacante, the ordinary government of the Church is suspended, no major episcopal appointments, no new doctrinal orientations: the government of the Church devolves upon the College of Cardinals, within the strict limits fixed for these circumstances, while the administration of the goods and temporal rights of the Holy See is entrusted to the Camerlengo of Holy Roman Church, assisted by three cardinals, according to the detailed rules of John Paul II’s apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis (22 February 1996)^[12]. The Holy See therefore never ceases to exist as a subject of law: it merely changes holder, with no resulting break in international continuity, the nunciatures stay open, the concordats remain in force, international commitments unchanged.

“Duo Sunt”: The Doctrine of the Two Powers According to Pope Gelasius I (494)

One of the oldest and most influential formulations of the spiritual power’s independence from temporal power goes back to a letter from Pope Gelasius I (492–496) to the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I, in 494:

“For there are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled: the sacred authority of the pontiffs and the royal power.” Pope Gelasius I, letter Famuli vestrae pietatis (“Duo sunt”) to Emperor Anastasius I, 494^[13]

This distinction between the auctoritas sacrata pontificum (the sacred authority of the pontiffs) and the regalis potestas (the royal power) does not deny the civil power’s legitimacy; it affirms that the spiritual authority of Peter’s See is irreducible to it and cannot be absorbed by any political power, even that of a Christian emperor. Incorporated into Gratian’s Decretum around 1140, this Gelasian doctrine shaped the medieval theory of Church–State relations for more than a millennium, and it remains the theological matrix of the modern Catholic claim to a spiritual sovereignty independent of any temporal tutelage, the very claim that would justify, fourteen centuries later, the pontifical demand for a minimal territory in 1929.

The Patrimony of Saint Peter and the Papal States (756–1870)

For more than eleven centuries, the Holy See’s sovereignty rested on a genuine territory: the Papal States, born of the Donation of Pepin. In 754, the king of the Franks pledged to Pope Stephen II to reconquer the exarchate of Ravenna and the duchy of Rome from the Lombards; the effective restitution of these territories “to Saint Peter” took place between 756 and 758, forming the nucleus of what the chronicles would call the Patrimony of Saint Peter^[14]. This territorial construction, which at its height covered nearly 44,000 km² of central Italy, lasted until 20 September 1870, when the army of the Kingdom of Italy seized Rome and put an end, in fact, to the popes’ temporal power. For the detailed history of this period, see The Papal States (756–1870).

One often neglected point must be stressed: Catholic doctrine has never made the Holy See’s spiritual sovereignty depend on possession of that territory. For eleven centuries, the Papal States were an instrument serving pontifical independence, a means of preventing the pope from becoming the political subject of a temporal prince, never the source of his authority, which remains founded on Petrine succession alone (canon 113 § 1). That is precisely why the disappearance of the Papal States in 1870 was never interpreted by the Church as an abolition of the Holy See’s sovereignty, but only as the loss of one means of guaranteeing it.

1870: The Roman Question, Sovereignty Maintained Without an Inch of Soil

After the capture of Rome, the Italian government unilaterally offered, through the Law of Guarantees of 13 May 1871, a special status recognising certain honorary prerogatives and a financial indemnity for the pope, without restoring any territorial sovereignty to him. Pope Pius IX refused this law, judging it incapable of juridically guaranteeing the Holy See’s independence since it remained a unilateral, revocable concession of the Italian State rather than an international treaty binding both parties. He withdrew into the Vatican Palace, calling himself a “prisoner”, a stance his successors, Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI, would maintain until the Lateran Agreements of 1929, for nearly fifty-nine years.

What this period from 1870 to 1929 demonstrates, from the standpoint of international law, is of considerable importance for the very definition of the Holy See: during those fifty-nine years, the pope possessed strictly no sovereign territory, not even the few hectares of the Vatican, technically still under Italian sovereignty, and yet most European powers maintained their diplomatic relations with him, his capacity to sign concordats was not contested and his quality as a subject of international law was not denied. France was the exception: it broke off its diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1904, before restoring them in 1921. The Jesuit canonist Felice M. Cappello devoted long developments to this Roman Question in his Summa iuris publici ecclesiastici (Gregorian University, Rome, 1928), analysing the juridical insufficiency of the status granted to the Pontiff by the 1871 Law of Guarantees^[15].

The 1870–1929 period thus constitutes, paradoxically, the best historical proof that the Holy See’s international personality does not depend on possession of a territory: it survived, intact, fifty-nine years of complete dispossession.

1929: The Lateran Treaty Recognises; It Does Not Create

On 11 February 1929, the Lateran Treaty ended the Roman Question by creating Vatican City State, but the very text of the treaty takes care to specify that this creation does not found the Holy See’s sovereignty; it merely recognises it:

“Italy recognises the sovereignty of the Holy See in the international field as an inherent attribute of its nature, in conformity with its tradition and the requirements of its mission in the world.” Lateran Treaty, article 2, 11 February 1929^[16]

The wording is juridically decisive: by this article Italy gives nothing to the Holy See; it acknowledges a pre-existing fact of law. Article 3, by contrast, does create a new juridical object, the 44-hectare territory on which the Holy See henceforth installs the material apparatus of its central government. For the complete diplomatic account of these negotiations and the detail of the three documents signed on 11 February 1929 (Treaty, Concordat, Financial Convention), see The Lateran Agreements (11 February 1929); for the technical examination of the State thus created, its fundamental laws, its citizenship, its organs, see The Creation of Vatican City State (1929).

From the Apocrisiarii of Constantinople to the Permanent Nunciatures

The practice of the pope sending personal representatives to foreign courts does not date from the 16th century but goes back to late antiquity. Among the earliest known pontifical envoys is Julian of Cos, a bishop dispatched by Pope Leo I (440–461) to Emperor Marcian in Constantinople, at the time of the Christological crisis that would culminate in the Council of Chalcedon (451)^[17]. This office, called the apocrisiariate, became a regular function: the future Pope Gregory the Great himself exercised it in Constantinople between 579 and 585, under the pontificate of Pelagius II, before being elected pope in 590^[18].

It was nevertheless at the end of the 15th century, under the pontificates of Sixtus IV and Alexander VI, that modern pontifical diplomacy in the strict sense took shape: permanent nunciatures, no longer mere ad hoc missions, were successively established in Spain, France, Venice and the Holy Roman Empire. The system reached its classical form under Gregory XIII, at the end of the 16th century^[19]. This continuity of more than fifteen centuries makes the Holy See’s diplomacy one of the oldest active diplomacies in the world, several centuries older than the permanent legations of the European monarchies themselves.

Nuncio, Pro-Nuncio, Internuncio, Apostolic Delegate: A Precise Hierarchy

Pontifical diplomatic vocabulary distinguishes several ranks of representation, whose terminology has evolved through successive reforms:

• the apostolic nuncio (nuntius, from the Latin nuntius, “messenger”) is an ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the first class, accredited to a head of State;
• the internuncio, an intermediate rank for second-rank countries, has disappeared from current practice;
• the pro-nuncio, once used for nuncios posted in countries where they did not enjoy protocolar deanship, was abolished by John Paul II, who unified the title under that of nuncio;
• the apostolic delegate is the pope’s representative to a local Church or an international organisation, without diplomatic accreditation to a government, used notably with States with which the Holy See maintains no formal diplomatic relations^[20].

The Nuncio, Dean by Right of the Diplomatic Corps Since the Congress of Vienna (1815)

One protocolar singularity distinguishes pontifical diplomacy from all others: in most Catholic or majority-Catholic countries, the apostolic nuncio is by right dean of the diplomatic corps, that is, the head of mission who, whatever his actual seniority of appointment, protocolarly presides over all accredited ambassadors. This privilege originates in the regulation on the precedence of diplomatic agents adopted on 19 March 1815, the final instrument annexed to the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, and confirmed by the 1961 Vienna Conference on Diplomatic Relations^[21].

According to Gilles Ferragu, the Holy See interprets this title of dean of the diplomatic corps as a mark of the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal^[22].

This automatic deanship, unique among all diplomatic representations in the world, concretely illustrates the Gelasian thesis examined above: the European nations of the Congress of Vienna, many of them not Catholic, accepted to recognise, at least protocolarly, the precedence of an authority that defines itself not as one power among others but as an instance of a different order.

Concordats: Eight Centuries of Ecclesiastical Treaty Law

The concordat, a bilateral treaty between the Holy See and a sovereign State, settling the status of the Catholic Church on that State’s territory, is one of the oldest instruments of conventional international law. Its practice spans all of modern history, from the settlement of the Investiture Controversy to the most diverse 20th-century political regimes.

This table is only a sample: over eight centuries the Holy See has concluded several dozen concordats, conventions and framework agreements with States of every political and religious tradition. It is precisely this contractual continuity, the capacity to remain the same signatory subject of law through centuries of political upheaval (empire, kingdoms, republics, totalitarian regimes), that constitutes one of the most concrete proofs of the Holy See’s perpetual juridical personality.

184 Bilateral Diplomatic Relations

The Holy See today maintains formal diplomatic relations with 184 States as well as with the European Union, the most recent State being the Sultanate of Oman, with which relations were established on 23 February 2023, a network exceeding in extent that of most great powers^[26]. It also maintains permanent observers to the FAO, the WHO, UNESCO, the Organization of American States and the African Union. This diplomatic universality, a subject of law with no army and no national economy, received on equal protocolar footing by States of every size and creed, has no equivalent among the other non-State subjects of international law.

Permanent Observer at the UN Since 6 April 1964

On 6 April 1964, under the pontificate of Paul VI and the UN secretary-generalship of U Thant, the Holy See was admitted as a Permanent Observer to the United Nations, a status never sought by his predecessors Pius XI and Pius XII, but pursued by Paul VI in the opening spirit of the then-ongoing Vatican II council^[27]. The decision explicitly retains that it is the Holy See, not Vatican City State, that holds this status, a precision that is anything but incidental: it means that the voice speaking in New York in the Church’s name speaks as a universal spiritual authority, not as the representative of a European micro-State with particular geopolitical interests.

When Pope John Paul II addressed the General Assembly on 2 October 1979, he himself specified the singular nature of this presence:

“Of course, the nature and purposes of the spiritual mission of the Apostolic See and the Church are such that their participation in the tasks and activities of the United Nations is profoundly different from that of States as political and temporal communities.” John Paul II, address to the United Nations General Assembly, New York, 2 October 1979^[28]

Resolution 58/314 (2004): Expanded Rights, Never the Vote

The Permanent Observer status, informal since 1964, was clarified and expanded by General Assembly resolution 58/314, adopted without a vote on 1 July 2004. This text explicitly recognises the Holy See, in its quality as an observer State, as entitled to participate in the general debate, to make interventions, to enjoy a right of reply, to have its communications circulated as official Assembly documents, to co-sponsor resolutions, and grants it a protocolar place immediately after the member States with six reserved seats^[29]. The resolution nevertheless maintains, unambiguously, one fundamental limit: the Holy See has no right to vote nor to stand for election within the General Assembly^[30].

This limitation is not endured as a diplomatic inferiority: on the contrary, it corresponds to the Holy See’s own deliberate choice, which has never sought full UN membership. Three converging reasons explain this choice. Theologically, the Holy See refuses to be reduced to one State among others: its mission is addressed to all men, not to a population delimited by borders. Juridically, full membership would require submitting certain decisions to the Assembly’s majority vote, which is incompatible with the magisterium’s doctrinal independence on questions such as life, the family or the end of life. Prudentially, finally, observer status makes it possible to alert, to propose, to denounce and to pray without mechanically committing the Church to bilateral conflicts between member States, exactly the active neutrality that article 24 of the Lateran Treaty had already codified for Vatican City State in 1929^[31].

Full Member of Technical Organisations: IAEA, OSCE, UPU, ITU

Beyond observer status at the UN, the Holy See is a full member, with voting rights, of several international organisations of a technical or regional vocation:

This combination, full member of certain technical or regional bodies, Permanent Observer at the United Nations, is not an inconsistency but reflects the constant logic of pontifical diplomacy: fully accepting the obligations of organisations whose vocation is technical or regional, while keeping, at the global and political scale of the UN, the prudential reserve proper to a universal spiritual authority.

An Authority at the Service of the Universal, Not One Political Power Among Others

The Vatican II council, in its pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, formulates the theological principle governing the whole of this diplomatic practice:

“The Church, which, by reason of her role and competence, is in no way identified with any political community nor bound by ties to any political system, is at once the sign and the safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person. The political community and the Church are independent of each other and autonomous in the field that belongs to each.” Vatican II Council, constitution Gaudium et Spes, no. 76^[37]

This mutual independence is not indifference: the same text adds that both instances will all the better fulfil their service of the common good by seeking sound co-operation between them^[38]. It is this balanced tension, autonomy in principle, co-operation in fact, that explains why the Holy See signs concordats without ever becoming an ordinary political subject, and why it speaks at the UN without ever claiming the vote that would make it a State like any other.

Frequent Misunderstandings: “Vatican” Is Not an Exact Synonym

The most widespread confusion in everyday language consists in using “the Vatican” to denote indiscriminately the Holy See, Vatican City State and the Roman Curia. This approximation, tolerable in ordinary conversation, becomes a substantive error as soon as a precise juridical act is analysed: an international treaty commits the Holy See; a vehicle registration falls to Vatican City State; a doctrinal note emanates from a dicastery of the Roman Curia. Confusing these three levels risks misinterpreting the exact scope of an act, for instance by believing that a purely administrative decision of the Vatican State commits the doctrine of the universal Church, or conversely.

This terminological rigour is not an academic refinement without practical consequence. In 1964 it was indeed the Holy See, not Vatican City State, that was admitted as Permanent Observer to the UN, underscoring that the Vatican voice in New York is indeed that of a universal spiritual authority, and not that of a territorial micro-State^[39][40].

A Guarantee That Survived the Worst Crises of the 20th Century

The Holy See’s international independence, backed since 1929 by the territorial neutrality of Vatican City State, proved decisive during the last century’s major trials. During the German occupation of Rome (1943–1944), the neutrality clause inscribed in article 24 of the Lateran Treaty offered the juridical framework that made it possible to shelter, within the Vatican precincts and the extraterritorial premises, thousands of persecuted persons safe from armed intervention. During the Cold War, the Holy See’s discreet diplomacy, the Ostpolitik conducted by Archbishop Casaroli under Paul VI, then John Paul II’s action on behalf of the persecuted Churches of Central Europe, rested on that same guarantee of sovereignty: free movement of nuncios, secrecy of pontifical correspondence, confidentiality of archives. These diplomatic successes rested juridically on the perpetual international personality that this article has traced from its patristic origins.

The Holy See offers international law a textbook case without equivalent: a subject of law whose juridical personality rests neither on a population, nor on a significant territory, nor on military or economic power, but on the continuity of a spiritual office transmitted over twenty centuries. Three lessons emerge from this journey.

First, international sovereignty is not necessarily territorial. The Holy See demonstrated this during the fifty-nine years (1870–1929) when it possessed not an inch of sovereign soil, and it continues to demonstrate it today: it is the Holy See, not Vatican City State, that signs concordats and sits at the UN.

Secondly, international recognition does not create the Holy See’s sovereignty; it acknowledges it, as the Lateran Treaty’s article 2 itself explicitly formulates. This juridical anteriority, founded in Catholic doctrine on the divine institution of Petrine primacy (canon 113 § 1), radically distinguishes the Holy See from ordinary subjects of international law, whose personality proceeds from a constitutive human act.

Thirdly, the independence of the spiritual from the temporal, the Gelasian thesis of the 5th century, taken up by Vatican II in the 20th, is not a theological abstraction: it has concrete diplomatic consequences, from the nuncio’s protocolar deanship since 1815 to the refusal of the UN vote in 2004. Twenty centuries after the promise made to Peter, the Holy See remains one of history’s rare subjects to exercise a recognised authority without ever having sought to become a power like any other.

• Read The Lateran Agreements (11 February 1929): the complete diplomatic account of the three documents that ended the Roman Question.
• Read The Creation of Vatican City State (1929): the technical examination of the Vatican State’s territory, fundamental laws and organs of government.
• Read The Papal States (756–1870): the history of the popes’ temporal power, from Pepin’s Donation to the capture of Rome.
• Read Vatican Council I (1869–1870): interrupted by the entry of Italian troops into Rome, which opened the Roman Question.
• Read Vatican Council II (1962–1965): under the pontificate of Paul VI, who obtained Permanent Observer status at the UN in 1964.