The Lateran Agreements (11 February 1929)

The Roman Question, opened on 20 September 1870

On 20 September 1870, the troops of General Raffaele Cadorna, acting on behalf of the Kingdom of Italy, breached the Porta Pia after a brief cannonade and entered Rome. Pope Pius IX, who had until then governed the Papal States, thus lost his temporal power over the last territory he still controlled after the Italian unification of 1860-1861.^[10] Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy on 1 July 1871.

Italy immediately attempted to settle the situation unilaterally. The Law of Guarantees of 13 May 1871 offered the pope an annual annuity of 3.225 million lire, the use of the Vatican, the Lateran and Castel Gandolfo, and certain prerogatives of sovereignty. Pius IX categorically rejected this fait accompli: accepting a situation imposed and revocable by a simple parliamentary law would amount to turning the bishop of Rome into a subject of the king of Italy and compromising the freedom of the Apostolic See.^[11] The pope declared himself a “prisoner in the Vatican” and, in the encyclical Respicientes of 1 November 1870, declared excommunicated the authors of the invasion and usurpation of Rome.^[12]

The conflict then took a highly visible symbolic form: successive popes (Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI) refused to leave the Vatican for nearly sixty years. None of them gave the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the exterior loggia of Saint Peter’s. None of them recognized the king of Italy. This Roman non possumus is one of the longest-running international disputes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.^[13]

Why the 1871 arrangement could not suffice

The pontifical refusal had nothing to do with an aristocratic attachment to temporal power for its own sake. It concerned a precise juridical point: to exercise worldwide spiritual authority, Peter’s successor must be able to act as a subject of international law, free from pressure by any State. A mere Italian law, amendable at any time by Parliament, cannot guarantee this independence.

Three structural deficiencies blocked any unilateral solution:

So long as these three questions were not settled together, the Holy See refused any normalization. This logic explains why the final negotiations produced three distinct documents signed simultaneously, rather than a single treaty.

Towards the breakthrough: Benedict XV, Pius XI and the 1919-1929 decade

Several factors converged in the interwar years to make a solution possible:

• Holy See side: Benedict XV (1914-1922), deeply affected by the Great War, authorized in 1919 the participation of Italian Catholics in political life, lifting in fact the non expedit — decree of the Sacred Penitentiary of 29 February 1868 (“neither elector nor eligible”), confirmed by Pius IX in audience on 11 October 1874, already softened by Pius X (case-by-case authorizations from 1904, encyclical Il fermo proposito of 11 June 1905). This decision paved the way for don Luigi Sturzo’s Italian People’s Party and an organized Catholic presence in the parliamentary Kingdom of Italy.^[14][15]
• Italian side: the post-war crisis made visible that the Questione romana remained an open diplomatic dispute, weighing on the international legitimacy of the young Kingdom of Italy.^[16][17]
• Geopolitical side: in post-war Europe, marked by the creation of the League of Nations and the redefinition of sovereignties, the Holy See’s lack of recognized territorial status appeared increasingly as a diplomatic anomaly.^[18]

When Achille Ratti was elected pope on 6 February 1922 under the name of Pius XI, he symbolically broke with the non possumus by immediately giving the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the exterior loggia of Saint Peter’s Basilica on the very day of his election — a public gesture not made since Pius IX. It was the first sign that the new pontiff considered the Questione romana as something to be settled.^[19]

The Pacelli-Barone channel

Preparatory contacts began in August 1926, in the strictest secrecy. For the Holy See, Pius XI appointed a highly unusual negotiator: Francesco Pacelli (1872-1935), a lay jurist, consistorial advocate, elder brother of the future Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli). On the Italian side, Mussolini appointed Domenico Barone, Councillor of State, a senior civil servant chosen to conduct the unofficial Italian channel discreetly.^[20][21]

The choice of a lay jurist to negotiate in the front line — rather than a cardinal — had two decisive advantages: avoiding any diplomatic fallout in case of failure, and allowing the pope to intervene as final arbiter on each sensitive clause. According to the Diario della Conciliazione kept by Pacelli himself, he was received in audience by Pius XI very many times on this dossier alone, and the text was reworked in many successive versions.^[22]

This method contrasted sharply with customary diplomatic negotiations. Instead of an official conference, regular private talks were held in Rome, away from the press and away from the Italian Parliament. Pius XI personally supervised every detail, several times refused compromises judged too favourable to the regime, and imposed the principle of indivisibility: no Treaty without a Concordat, no Concordat without a Financial Convention.

Three years of hard bargaining

“His Holiness the Sovereign Pontiff Pius XI and His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, have resolved to stipulate a Treaty.” — Preamble of the Lateran Treaty, 11 February 1929^[23]

The negotiations successively stumbled over:

• The nature of the future pontifical State: the pope refused any even partial restitution of the former Papal States, which he judged anachronistic and politically impossible. He claimed a minimal, strictly functional territory, guaranteeing the independence of the Apostolic See without restoring an old-regime temporal power.
• The status of extra-territorial real estate (major basilicas, pontifical palaces, Castel Gandolfo, seats of Roman congregations, the Lateran complex): these would remain on Italian territory but enjoy extra-territoriality or equivalent immunities.
• The amount of the financial indemnity: the Holy See reduced its initial claims in view of Italy’s economic situation, and the final compromise was set at 1.75 billion lire (750 million in cash + 1 billion in 5% consolidated bonds)^[24].
• The content of the Concordat: canonical marriage recognized civilly, religious teaching in schools, independence of Catholic Action, canonical protection of priests and religious.

The work went through a grave crisis in January 1929 when Domenico Barone, the principal Italian negotiator, died suddenly on 4 January 1929. Mussolini then personally took over the Italian conduct of the talks, with Dino Grandi at his side, and quickened the timetable. The signing was set for 11 February 1929.^[25][26]

The ceremony took place at the Lateran Palace, on the morning of 11 February. Since the fourth century, the palace has been the official residence of the bishops of Rome; the choice of venue was not neutral. By signing not at the Vatican but at the Lateran — the historic seat of the papacy before the move to Avignon and the return to Saint Peter’s — Pius XI inscribed the act in the long continuity of the Roman see.^[27]

At the signing table, the two plenipotentiaries: Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State, for the Holy See, and Benito Mussolini, President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs, signing in the name of King Victor Emmanuel III.^[28] The king did not sign himself: he would ratify four months later, at the exchange of the instruments of ratification on 7 June 1929.^[29]

The diplomatic ritual was sober: the three documents — the political Treaty and its annexes (maps, list of extraterritorial properties, cadastral plans of the future Vatican State), the Concordat, the Financial Convention — were signed on the same day.^[30]

The former Christian-democrat priest Romolo Murri hailed, the day after the signing, a twofold fact unprecedented since 1870: Italy once again had a pope as interlocutor, and the Church once again had a State.^[31]

The Treaty — creation of the State of Vatican City

The Treaty comprises 27 articles. Its juridical core rests on four points.

Article 1: Italy reaffirms the principle enshrined in Article 1 of the Albertine Statute of 4 March 1848, according to which “the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the sole religion of the State”.^[32] This clause would cause problems in 1948 and be removed in 1984; in 1929, it marked the break with the anticlerical liberalism of nineteenth-century Italy.

Article 3: Italy recognizes in the Holy See “full ownership and exclusive and absolute power, as well as sovereign jurisdiction, over the Vatican”^[33] — that is, a genuine State. Vatican City would extend over 44 hectares (0.44 km²)^[34][35], enclaved within Rome and sharing its border only with Italy.

Article 24: Vatican territory “shall always and in every case be considered neutral and inviolable territory”.^[36] The Holy See exercises its full sovereignty there; it has no vocation to take part in temporal conflicts.

Article 26: the Holy See declares the “Roman Question” “definitively and irrevocably settled and therefore eliminated”, and recognizes the Kingdom of Italy under the House of Savoy with Rome as its capital.^[37] In return, Italy recognizes the State of Vatican City under the sovereign authority of the Sovereign Pontiff.

To these central articles are added provisions on extraterritorial properties: the three patriarchal basilicas (Saint John Lateran, Saint Mary Major, Saint Paul Outside the Walls), the pontifical palaces of Castel Gandolfo and the Barberini villa, the seats of most dicasteries, the Dataria palace, the Chancery palace, the Propaganda Fide palace. These properties remain juridically on Italian territory, but enjoy there diplomatic immunities equivalent to those of embassies. The list appears in an annex to the treaty.^[38]

The Concordat — the Church in Italian society

The Concordat comprises 45 articles. It is juridically distinct from the Treaty, but signed on the same day. It governs the place of the Catholic Church in Italian civil life. The most important provisions:

Three articles deserve particular comment.

Article 34 — canonical marriage with civil effects — is one of the most structuring. It means that a couple may marry exclusively in church, without a separate civil ceremony, and that this marriage automatically produces all civil effects in Italy: civil status, matrimonial regime, filiation, succession. It is a return to a pre-liberal practice, bringing Italian law closer to the Catholic countries of Latin America. The Republic of 1948 would keep this provision; it would only be nuanced in 1984.^[39]

Article 36 — religious teaching in public schools — is in his eyes the nodal point of the concordat: Pius XI holds the Church’s educational mandate to be full and entire, and would write in his chirograph of 30 May 1929 that this mandate belongs not to the State but to the Church^[40]; a few months later, he would devote an entire encyclical to Christian education (Divini illius Magistri, 31 December 1929).^[41] It is also on this point that the 1931 crisis (Non abbiamo bisogno) would arise, when fascism attempted to capture youth by suppressing Catholic youth organizations.

Article 43 — recognition of Catholic Action — gives juridical protection to the great lay movement founded in 1867 and reorganized by Pius X and Pius XI. The Concordat specifies that this organization must remain “outside every political party” and placed under the direct authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It is Catholic Action which would play, in the years 1930-1943, the role of training school for the future cadres of Italian Christian Democracy.

The Financial Convention — settling 1870

The Financial Convention, brief (4 articles), settles the material question. Italy pays the Holy See:

• 750 million Italian lire in cash;
• 1 billion Italian lire in 5% bearer Italian consolidated bonds.

That is a total of about 1.75 billion lire of 1929 — a considerable sum, but well below Vatican estimates of the 1870 spoliation. The text specifies that this indemnity is paid “in definitive settlement of financial relations with Italy arising from the events of 1870”.^[42]

Pius XI immediately entrusted the management of this capital to a lay economist, Bernardino Nogara, appointed in 1929 first director of the Special Administration of the Property of the Holy See, created to manage the proceeds of the Financial Convention.^[43] The Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) is a distinct institution, founded by Pius XII on 27 June 1942; the Special Administration would subsist until its replacement by the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See in 1967.^[44] This point is essential: the pope wanted the Holy See to have real economic autonomy, independent of worldwide diocesan alms and State subsidies, as a condition of the pastoral freedom of the Apostolic See.

“The man whom Providence made us meet”

Two days after the signing, on 13 February 1929, Pius XI delivered before the professors and students of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan an address that remained famous, known by its opening words: Vogliamo anzitutto (“We wish first of all”). In it the pope showed himself deeply satisfied with the outcome, which he described as the end of a “painful thorn” in the very flesh of the Church.^[45]

It is in this speech that the formula appears which would weigh on later historiography:

“And perhaps a man was also needed such as the one whom Providence made Us meet; a man who did not have the preoccupations of the liberal school.” — Pius XI, address Vogliamo anzitutto, 13 February 1929^[46]

The exact context of the remark matters. The pope did not canonize Mussolini; he merely observed that the break with the anticlerical liberalism inherited from the Risorgimento had made negotiation possible. The sentence says neither that Mussolini is a saint, nor that fascism conforms to Catholic doctrine. It says that a leader unbound by the secular dogmas of nineteenth-century Italy was able, on this precise point, to lift the ideological lock that prevented any conciliation.

Pius XI concluded this same address with a symmetrical formula, sometimes forgotten:

“We believe that, through him, We have given God back to Italy and Italy back to God.” — Pius XI, Vogliamo anzitutto, 13 February 1929^[47]

The twofold direction — God to Italy and Italy to God — shows that the pope thought of the concordat as a mutual reintegration, not as a submission. The Italian State reintroduced God into public life (schools, marriage, liturgical calendar); the Church regained a major European nation in full practice. But this optimistic vision would be put to the test very soon: as early as 1931, fascism would attempt to capture Catholic youth organizations.

Mussolini’s reply: “Catholic because Roman”

Mussolini, for his part, presented the concordat to the Chamber of Deputies on 13 May 1929 in a triumphant speech. In it he uttered a sentence that became famous, generally quoted as a stroke of political genius but in reality expressing a nationalist reduction of the Church’s universal mission:

“The Catholic Church is not Catholic because she is Roman, but she is Roman because she is Catholic.” — Benito Mussolini, speech to the Chamber of Deputies, 13 May 1929^[48]

The formula, elegant in Italian, instrumentalizes the historic centrality of Rome to symbolically reclaim Christian universality for the benefit of fascist “romanità”. Pius XI reacted firmly in a chirograph addressed to Cardinal Gasparri, dated from the solemnity of Corpus Domini, 30 May 1929: in it he noted erroneous formulas on the very essence of Christianity and Catholicism, recalled that the Church’s universality predates Saint Paul’s call as well as Saint Peter’s mandate to the Gentiles, and had very quickly extended beyond the Roman Empire, which was far from being the whole known world — then declared the Treaty and the Concordat each the necessary complement of the other, each from the other inseparable and indissociable: simul stabunt, simul cadent.^[49] This clarification long prevented the concordat from being interpreted as doctrinal backing for the regime.

The Catholic world applauds, secular Italy protests

The international reception was broadly favourable. Catholic episcopates worldwide hailed the restoration of the Holy See’s sovereignty. European chancelleries considered that the end of the Questione romana clarified the Vatican’s diplomatic status: a sovereign State can, unlike a mere ecclesiastical administration, freely exchange ambassadors with every country in the world.

In Italy, by contrast, liberal and anticlerical circles, heirs of the Risorgimento, denounced a “retreat from 1870”. The philosopher Benedetto Croce, a liberal senator, delivered in the Senate on 24 May 1929 a speech that remained famous against the ratification law, which he presented as a half-century retreat from the liberal conquests of the Risorgimento.^[50]

The senatorial vote nonetheless remained very largely favourable, and ratification was secured by implementing Law No. 810 of 27 May 1929.^[51] Mussolini controlled Parliament, but this near-unanimity is also explained by the popular character of the agreement: for most Italians, the Questione romana was an identity thorn, and its resolution was felt as a national relief.

Non abbiamo bisogno and the end of the idyll

The concordat did not mean the end of friction. As early as the following year, the fascist regime attempted to capture Italian youth by suppressing the Catholic organizations competing with the Balilla and the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio. In May 1931, police raided the headquarters of Italian Catholic Action and of the Italian Catholic University Federation (FUCI). Pius XI riposted with the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, dated 29 June 1931.

The pope dared a formula that would remain in the history of Catholic social doctrine. He described integral fascism as “statolatria pagana” — “pagan state-worship” — and denounced the totalitarian claim of the State to form youth alone:

“Such a conception of the State cannot be Catholic. [...] It claims to detach youth from the Church and from Jesus Christ, and to establish in its education an absolute monopoly of the State, which amounts to a true and proper pagan statolatry.” — Pius XI, encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, 29 June 1931^[52]

For the first time since 1929, the pope publicly distinguished the juridical concordat (which he maintained) from doctrinal adherence to fascism (which he refused). This distinction would be fundamental to understanding the whole 1931-1939 decade. It would culminate in the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (1937) against Nazism and in the draft encyclical on human unity (Humani Generis Unitas), interrupted by the pope’s death on 10 February 1939, the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Lateran Agreements.

📖 See the detailed article: The Church Facing Totalitarianisms (1917-1989)

An agreement that survives the crisis

Despite Non abbiamo bisogno, the three 1929 texts were not denounced. A compromise of 2 September 1931 between Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pius XII, Secretary of State since 1930) and the fascist minister Francesco Giunta restored Catholic Action’s freedom of organization, in exchange for its withdrawal from the direct political field. The concordat resumed its course. This is one of the elements showing that the agreements were juridically robust: conceived as a lasting framework, they withstood even major political crises.

The turning point of Article 7 of the Constitution

After the fall of fascism (July 1943), the collapse of the Republic of Salò (April 1945) and the institutional referendum of 2 June 1946 creating the Italian Republic, the Constituent Assembly (1946-1947) had to decide the fate of the Lateran Agreements. The question was delicate: these agreements had been signed by a fascist government, but they settled a Church-State dispute far exceeding the Mussolini parenthesis.

The decisive debate took place in March 1947. The draft article (initially Article 5, which became Article 7) proposed inscribing in the republican Constitution the following formula:

“The State and the Catholic Church are, each in its own order, independent and sovereign. Their relations are governed by the Lateran Agreements. Amendments to the Agreements, accepted by both parties, do not require the constitutional revision procedure.” — Article 7 of the Italian Constitution, voted on 25 March 1947, in force on 1 January 1948^[53]

The vote of 25 March 1947 is one of the most surprising in twentieth-century European constitutional history. The Italian Communist Party, led by Palmiro Togliatti, voted for the constitutionalization of the agreements, although it had until then opposed any mention of the agreements in the Constitution. Piero Calamandrei, in the account he published in April 1947 in the review Il Ponte, reported that Togliatti supposedly then called out to De Gasperi, in session: “We have understood, honourable De Gasperi, we have understood”.^[54]

This strategic vote made it possible to avoid a deep cultural fracture in post-war Italy. It disappointed secular liberals, however: Piero Calamandrei, the illustrious jurist, saw in it a defeat of all democratic political forces and, at the same time, of Italian sovereignty and parliamentary democracy.^[55]

Juridical consequence: a world unicum

The constitutionalization of the Lateran Agreements created an exceptional juridical situation in the Western world. The status of Italian Church-State relations is:

• Bilateral: it depends on an agreement between two sovereign States (Italy and the Holy See), not on a unilateral Italian decision;
• Constitutional: it has constitutional value in Italy, hence superior to ordinary law;
• Amendable by mutual agreement: it can be revised by simple bilateral agreement, without a constitutional revision procedure.

No other democratic country constitutionalized its concordat in this way. This Italian specificity is explained by the historic weight of the Questione romana and by the necessity, in 1947, of stabilizing a founding compromise between Catholics and secularists.

A long-prepared revision

Fifty-five years after the 1929 signing, the concordat was partially revised. The negotiation lasted nearly fifteen years: opened under Paul VI in 1969, it was conducted on the Holy See side by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli (who became Secretary of State in 1979 under John Paul II), and on the Italian side by successive heads of government.^[56]

The final signing took place on 18 February 1984 at Villa Madama, the official residence of the Italian government on Monte Mario in Rome. On the Holy See side, Agostino Casaroli. On the Italian side, Bettino Craxi, the Socialist Prime Minister, the first non-Christian-Democrat to sign a concordat with the Vatican since Mussolini. Ratification came through Italian Law No. 121 of 25 March 1985.^[57]

What changes, what remains

The main changes are four in number:

The 1929 Treaty (sovereignty of Vatican City, extraterritorial properties, Roman Question definitively settled) was not touched. The 1929 Financial Convention was absorbed into the new otto per mille system: every Italian taxpayer may assign 0.8% of income tax to a recognized confession (Catholic Church, Waldensians and Methodists, Adventists, Assemblies of God, Baptists, Lutherans, Orthodox, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Anglicans...) or to the State.^[58] It is today the principal source of revenue of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI).

The 1984 revision is therefore not a denunciation of the Lateran Agreements, but an update. It acknowledges several developments: the secularization of Italian society, the teaching of Vatican II on religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae, 1965), the end of the confessional State as a European political ideal, and the practical necessity of funding the Church otherwise than through budgetary subsidies.

Tiny sovereignty as maximum guarantee

The State of Vatican City is the smallest State in the world recognized by the United Nations (permanent observer status since 1964): 44 hectares^[59][60] and 882 inhabitants as of 31 December 2024^[61], with no neighbour but Italy. This extreme smallness is deliberate. The Holy See did not want to remake the nineteenth-century Papal States; it wanted a minimal yet sovereign territory, just enough for the person of Peter’s Successor and the central administration of the Church to be subject to no foreign State.

The calculation proved fruitful. The neutrality status recognized by Article 24 of the Treaty provided the juridical framework which subsequent popes would use to conduct an independent diplomacy: claimed neutrality during the Second World War, the Ostpolitik of John XXIII and Paul VI facing the blocs, John Paul II’s support for Solidarność in Poland — so many initiatives which a Holy See deprived of territorial sovereignty could not have conducted under the same juridical conditions.^[62] One may see in it the hidden condition of the contemporary Church’s geopolitical freedom.

A juridical model for the world

The juridical status of the Holy See — a subject of international law by virtue of Petrine primacy — combined with that of the State of Vatican City — a sovereign territory in the classical sense — constitutes a remarkable juridical innovation. In January 2022, the Holy See maintained diplomatic relations with 183 States^[63]; the establishment of full relations with the Sultanate of Oman on 23 February 2023 brought that number to 184^[64]. It takes an active part in international conferences (UN, OSCE, Council of Europe). This diplomacy would have been impossible without the juridical solution found on 11 February 1929.

An undated Catholic lesson

From the Catholic point of view, the Lateran Agreements recall three structural truths:

1. The Church’s freedom comes first. The agreements’ purpose was not to procure temporal advantages for the pope, but to guarantee that he could freely exercise his spiritual mission. That is why the pope refused in 1871 a comfortable annuity subject to the Italian Parliament, and accepted in 1929 a minuscule yet sovereign State.
2. A concordat is never doctrinal backing. Pius XI signed with Mussolini in 1929, condemned his excesses in 1931, and condemned Nazi racism in 1937. The distinction between juridical act and moral adherence is constitutive of pontifical diplomacy.
3. The Catholic Church is universal, not national. Mussolini’s formula (“Catholic because Roman”) inverted this truth. The patristic formula stands: Catholic because universal, whose visible seat is in Rome. The 1929 agreements protected this universality, not the reverse.

• Read The Church Facing Totalitarianisms (1917-1989): a broad dossier on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the twentieth-century totalitarianisms.
• Read The 1905 Law of Separation: comparison with the French unilateral solution, opposed to the Italian bilateral solution.
• Read The Basilica of Saint John Lateran: historic seat of the place where the agreements were signed.
• Read The First Vatican Council (1869-1870): interrupted precisely by the entry of Italian troops into Rome which opened the Questione romana.
• Read The Old Saint Peter’s Basilica: for the long history of Roman centrality.