{"id":266,"date":"2009-02-11T10:02:52","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T10:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/buon-compleanno-vaticano.html"},"modified":"2009-02-11T10:02:52","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T10:02:52","slug":"buon-compleanno-vaticano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/buon-compleanno-vaticano.html","title":{"rendered":"Buon compleanno, Citta’ del Vaticano!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Map<\/span>“All I want is a small corner of the earth where I am master,” Pope Pius IX said in 1871, when the reunification of Italy had finally overwhelmed church resistance and the Papal States were no more. And a small corner is all he got–108 walled-in acres on the far side of the Tiber, the world’s smallest state. But as often happens, the loss redounded to the church’s benefit.
\nToday, Feb. 11, is the 80th anniversary of the Lateran Pacts<\/a> signed in 1929 by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Gasparri and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. The pacts regularized the status of the Vatican, compensated the church for the loss of its territory, and provided a starting point for successive popes to shed their isolation as “prisoners of the Vatican.”
\nPaul VI’s visits overseas–the first by a pontiff in the modern era–have too often been eclipsed by John Paul II’s epic record of travel, but Paul was dubbed “the Pilgrim Pope”–and transformed the papacy into a Pauline office as much as a Petrine one. George Weigel and others have spoken about this as the “post-Constantinian” era of the church, and I think that is a legacy of Vatican II as much as anything else.
\nYet today’s anniversary also reminds me of the church’s necessary sense of place in the world, for good and ill. John Paul couldn’t wait to hit the road and get out of the golden cage of the apostolic palace. But leaving his lieutenants in charge while he was away didn’t necessarily work out well. And John XXIII never traveled overseas but his outlook was hardly captive to the Curia. Besides, how many religions have their own Ruritania<\/a>. Or is it Shangri-La<\/a>? The Magic Kingdom<\/a>?
\nThe motto of Vatican City State (which is the temporal entity distinct from the Holy See–and with a better balance sheet, thanks to its various industries) is “A small territory with a great mission.” That seems to sum it up.
\nThere are many resources to mark the occassion. Some of the best are on the Vatican’s increasingly spanky website<\/a>. Check out the “General Information” tab<\/a> for some fascinating historical bits, from the origins of the Montes Vaticani to the papal flag and anthem, the license plates, and the population. And the webcams<\/a> are pretty cool.
\nAs CNS notes<\/a>, an exhibition on Vatican City State <\/a>opens tomorrow, Feb. 12. in the Braccio di Carlo Magno in St. Peter’s Square.<\/p>\n

Among the many interesting and notable objects at the show will be the actual accord from the Vatican Secret Archives, making it the first time the original treaty will be on public display.
\nThere will also be a scale model made out of birch wood of the 108-acre Vatican City State and the magnificent miter of Pope Pius XI who oversaw the building of the state’s new infrastructure during his 1922-1939 pontificate.
\nCar lovers will enjoy the one-of-a-kind Citroen “Lictoria” parked at the show. It was specially made for Pope Pius XI and has a throne in the back seat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As to that last one, well, times change–even in the Vatican.
\n\"Popemobilette<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}