Vatican City and Rome?

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porthos11 said:
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Ecclesiastically, the Pope is the Bishop of the Diocese of Rome. His Cathedral is St. John Lateran, and that church is inside of Rome, not Vatican City. …
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Saint John Lateran does however enjoy extraterritorial privileges, similar to an embassy for the Pope, but still remains part of Italy not Vatican City.
 
Rome is a city and capital of Italy. The Vatican is an independent city state. The most important difference between Rome and the Vatican is there are different governments in each place. Rome has no say at the Vatican and the Pope doesn’t control the government of Italy, though he may try. The Pope is also the Bishop of Rome by Catholic tradition. The Bishop’s church in Rome is St John Lateran. The Vatican accepts euros as currency, but has been in trouble with credit card companies because of lack of banking transparency. Italy has had no such problems.
This situation exists because the various areas of Italy have resented the Pope’s authority. For protection, the Vatican had become a papal refuge. Between its formation and Pope John 23, the Pope did not leave the Vatican at all. Now they travel freely. This Pope travels with his Argentine passport. It is understood that the rules at the Vatican do not apply to Italians.
BTW- Italians are somewhat irreligious in spite of their proximity to the Vatican. I have seen Italian women go to church dressed as scantily as here. Guys go in t-shirts and torn jeans.
 
Jack007 said:
rome is not an ideal, but the archdiocese of which the holy father is the archbishop, and also a city that was not “built in a day.”
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You are right. I went off on a little tangent of my own. Bad blond hair day.
 
👍👍👍

Thanks so much for all your answers.

Do you suppose there is an important reason why the Lateran Church is located outside Vatican City? It seems to answer my concern that the Bishop’s office and Church should be in Roman territory.
 
rcwitness said:
👍👍👍

Thanks so much for all your answers.

Do you suppose there is an important reason why the Lateran Church is located outside Vatican City? It seems to answer my concern that the Bishop’s office and Church should be in Roman territory.
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It is just an historical artifact that Saint John Lateran is separate.

In the 1870’s, when Italy conquered Rome, they wanted to make the Pope an Italian citizen with limited recognition as a sovereign. The Pope’s refused, and for 50 years, never left the Papal Palace at the Vatican. The Italians wanted to preserve all the papal basilicas as state historic sites, but chose not to forcefully seize the Vatican. In 1929, Italy agreed to dropped its claims to sovereignty over the Vatican, if the Pope dropped his claims Rome and the surrounding territory.
 
Thus, it could have happened that the Pope were staying at the Lateran Palace next to Saint John’s when Italy invaded, and we might be discussing “Lateran City”!
 
runningdude said:
Thus, it could have happened that the Pope were staying at the Lateran Palace next to Saint John’s when Italy invaded, and we might be discussing “Lateran City”!
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I suppose, but the Popes had moved out of the Lateran palace long before Garibaldi took Rome. By that time, they had moved to a palace by what is now the Gregorian University.

The Lateran Palace was cut in half when they put in the road leading from St. John Lateran to the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem (thereby completing a triangle between St. Mary Major, representing the birth of Christ; Holy Cross, representing His death; and St. John Lateran, representing His Resurrection).
 
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