Could a Royal Monarch become a Catholic priest and keep their royal title?

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for example in the hypothetical scenario if a royal prince or king decided to become a catholic priest (however unlikely) would they get to keep their royal title and status in the RC church?

Also is the Pope technically King of the Vatican?
 
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Depends on the rules of the crown. In the UK at least Catholics are not allowed to hold royal titles becuase of the Monarch’s position as the Governor of the Church of England
 
In England the situation is complicated by the CoE of course but in other countries (e.g. Spain and Belgium) there are Catholic monarchies.
 
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St. Pulcheria did.

And the Pope is the Sovereign of Vatican City.
 
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Krisdun said:
Also is the Pope technically King of the Vatican?
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No. As I understand it (I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong) the Vatican City State is a monarchy, but the monarch bears the title of Pope, not King.
 
Canon law prevents a cleric from holding political office; I’m not sure how that plays out in royal families, but they likely wouldn’t be the reigning monarch.
 
Krisdun said:
would they get to keep their royal title and status in the RC church?
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I can think of just one instance of this kind in the past. In 1578 King Sebastian of Portugal was killed in battle. He was 22 years old and unmarried. His closest male relative, who succeeded to the throne, was his elderly uncle Henry, who was a cardinal. Henry was laicized at his own request (I think) but the reason for that was that he wanted to marry and have a son so that his family, the Aviz dynasty, wouldn’t die out. (It did. Henry was the last Aviz king of Portugal.)

Here’s Henry’s bio. He is named as Henrique de Portugal.
https://webdept.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1545.htm#Portugal
 
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Who has or doesn’t have a title is a matter of State law, not divine law. Should someone having that title (for the sake of the discussion, we will assume “prince”) go to seminary and be ordained, I seriously doubt the Church would say “you are no longer a prince” because that would be presuming State authority. It would be up to the State to determine if ordination constituted a change such that the individual would lose the title, or retain the title but no longer be in position to become king. The Church, however, would have the authority to say that the priest could not “ascend to the throne” unless laicized.

Carrying that forward, and presuming the State did not take away the title, should the progression according to State law indicate that when the current king dies, the ordained individual would still be next in line to be “crowned”, then presumably the priest would “abdicate” and the matter resolved to whomever followed him in line. The alternative would be either to request laicization, or to be laicized without consent.
 
Yes the Vatican is not a democratic state and as you mention a monarchy and one could argue that the head of a monarchy would be a king which happens to be the Pope!
 
That is my understanding too. Hooray for Pope Paul VI, who got rid of the papal tiara. Christ did not appoint Peter to be a State ruler; matters went south some time after Constantine when the Church acquired lands, and interestingly, little is said about what part the Church’s “meddling” in government affairs had to do with accelerating the Protestant Revolution; there were German princes who rebelled at least partially due to Church influence of which they wanted to rid themselves. Some of the Protestant Revolution had to do with theology; but much of the theological debate had at least an undertone of rebellion to Church influence within State matters.

The last lands the Church had civil authority over were the Papal States, and their rebellion, which effectively put several Popes in isolation in the Vatican was not a pretty sight. It was the source of the failure to recall the bishops to finish the work of Vatican 1, which had taken a break.
 
Not all monarchies are headed by a king. Luxembourg, for instance, is ruled by a Grand Duke.

Back in the days of the German Empire, some of the member states were kingdoms, others were duchies, and so on. At least one, but I don’t remember which one, was an ecclesiastical state: whoever was archbishop at the time was also the head of state.

[Edit]

It seems there were three such ecclesiastical states, the archbishoprics of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier.

en.wikipedia.org

Electorate of Cologne - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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Another point to mention is that the Pope has a lot of authority (pretty much what he decides is final and no one can challenge it) in that sense he has the power of a king.
 
Krisdun said:
Another point to mention is that the Pope has a lot of authority (pretty much what he decides is final and no one can challenge it) in that sense he has the power of a king.
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When Pope Benedict XVI was elected pope, he was not allowed to bring his cats with him to live in the Vatican “for security reasons”. When I read that, I thought, “It’s his country, and he could do whatever he pleases in it!” But apparently not.
 
Before the Papal State was merged into the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, the Pope was indeed the temporal ruler of a state with all the powers of any other ruler. “King” is a title borne by some monarchs but not by others. No pope ever had the title “king” but, as you say, he had as much power as a king. He was the absolute ruler of a medium-sized country spread across the middle of Italy, from coast to coast, corresponding roughly to the present-day provinces of Lazio, Umbria, Marche, and part of Emilia-Romagna.

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Weren’t there Prince-Bishops back in the day? I’m thinking especially of places like France.
 
Well that was quite a sizeable territory the Pope was in charge of back then!
 
BartholomewB said:
He was the absolute ruler of a medium-sized country spread across the middle of Italy, from coast to coast, corresponding roughly to the present-day provinces of Lazio and Emilia-Romagna.
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In theory, yes. In practice, the Papal States were generally a hodge-podge of petty states that were ruled by local despots who acted largely without much interference from the Pope. And Rome itself was all but independent since the 1100s. Some popes did try to assert their authority over the area, usually with disastrous consequences, though some were somewhat successful, like Julius II. Most popes just didn’t give much thought to the papal states except as a source of income.
 
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Yes, but that was equally true of many of the other Italian states at the time, such as the Pope’s neighbor to the south, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Pope Gregory XVI, Pius IX’s predecessor, is said to have spent much more time and energy on dealing with the serious political unrest in the Papal State, after the end of the Napoleonic era, than on Church affairs, which he tended to let slide.
 
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Very good indeed! Certainly looks like Prince-Bishops do exist after all! Learnt something new today for sure.
 
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