The Lateran Treaty was one component of the Lateran Pacts of 1929, agreements between Italy under King Victor Emmanuel III and Duce Benito Mussolini and the Holy See under Pope Pius XI to settle the long-standing Roman question.
The treaty recognised Vatican City as an independent state under the sovereignty of the Holy See. Italy also agreed to give the Catholic Church financial compensation for the loss of the Papal States. In 1948, the Lateran Treaty was recognized in the Constitution of Italy as regulating the relations between the Italian Republic and the Catholic Church. While the treaty was significantly revised in 1984, ending the status of Catholicism as the sole state religion of Italy, the Vatican remains a distinct sovereign entity to the present day.
The treaty and associated pacts were named after the Lateran Palace, where they were signed on 11 February 1929. The Italian Parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929.
The Lateran Pacts are often presented as three treaties: a 27-article treaty of conciliation, a three-article financial convention, and a 45-article concordat; however, the website of the Holy See presents the financial convention as an annex of the treaty of conciliation, considering the pacts as two documents:
A political treaty recognising the full sovereignty of the Holy See in the State of Vatican City, which was thereby established, accompanied by four annexes:
A map of the territory of Vatican City State
Maps of buildings with extraterritorial privilege and exemption from expropriation and taxes (owned by the Holy See but located in Italy and not forming part of Vatican City)
Maps of buildings with exemption from expropriation and taxes (but without extraterritorial privilege)
A financial convention agreed on as a definitive settlement of the claims of the Holy See following the capture of Rome in 1870 of its territories and property
A concordat regulating relations between the Catholic Church and the Italian state.
During the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century, the Papal States under Pope Pius IX resisted incorporation into the new nation, even as almost all the other Italian countries joined it; Camillo Cavour's dream of proclaiming the Kingdom of Italy from the steps of St. Peter's Basilica did not come to pass. The nascent Kingdom of Italy invaded and occupied Romagna (the eastern portion of the Papal States) in 1860, leaving only Lazio (Latium) in the pope's domains.
Latium, including Rome itself, was occupied and annexed in 1870. For the following sixty years, relations between the Papacy and the Italian government were hostile, and the sovereign rights of the pope became known as the Roman question.
The Popes knew that Rome was irrevocably the capital of Italy. There was nothing they wanted less than to govern it or be burdened with a papal kingdom. What they wished was independence, a foothold on the earth that belonged to no other sovereign.
Under the terms of the Law of Guarantees of 1871, the Italian government offered to Pius IX and his successors the use of, but not sovereignty over, the Vatican and Lateran Palaces and a yearly income of 3,250,000 lire. The Holy See refused this settlement, on the grounds that the pope's spiritual jurisdiction required clear independence from any political power, and thereafter each pope considered himself a "prisoner in the Vatican". The Lateran Treaty ended this impasse.
Negotiations for the settlement of the Roman question began in 1926 between the Holy See and the Italian fascist government led by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, and culminated in the agreements of the Lateran Pacts, signed—the Treaty says—for King Victor Emmanuel III by Mussolini and for Pope Pius XI by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, on 11 February 1929. It was ratified on 7 June 1929.
The agreements included a political treaty which created the state of the Vatican City and guaranteed full and independent sovereignty to the Holy See. The Pope was pledged to perpetual neutrality in international relations and to abstention from mediation in a controversy unless specifically requested by all parties. In the first article of the treaty, Italy reaffirmed the principle established in the 1848 Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, that "the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Religion is the only religion of the State".
The attached financial agreement was accepted as settlement of all the claims of the Holy See against Italy from the loss of temporal power over the Papal States in 1870, though the sum agreed to was actually less than Italy had offered in 1871. To commemorate the successful conclusion of the negotiations, Mussolini commissioned the Via della Conciliazione ("Road of the Conciliation"), which would symbolically link the Vatican City to the heart of Rome.
The post-World War II Constitution of the Italian Republic, adopted in 1948, states that relations between the State and the Catholic Church "are regulated by the Lateran Treaties". In 1984, the concordat was significantly revised. Both sides declared: "The principle of the Catholic religion as the sole religion of the Italian State, originally referred to by the Lateran Pacts, shall be considered to be no longer in force."