Prisoner in The Vatican - Roman Question

Roman Question

Following the fall of Rome, most countries continued to accredit diplomatic representatives to the Holy See, seeing it as an entity of public international law with which they desired such relations, while they withdrew their consuls, whose work had been connected instead with the temporal power of the papacy, which was now ended. However, no diplomatic relations existed between the Holy See and the Italian state.

According to Jasper Ridley, at the 1867 Congress of Peace in Geneva, Garibaldi referred to "that pestilential institution which is called the Papacy" and proposed giving "the final blow to the monster". This was a reflection of the bitterness that had been generated by the struggle against Pope Pius IX in 1849 and 1860, and it was in sharp contrast to the letter that Garibaldi had written to the pope from Montevideo in 1847, before those events.

The stand-off was ended on 11 February 1929, when the Lateran Pacts created a new microstate, that of Vatican City, and opened the way for diplomatic relations between Italy and the Holy See. The Holy See in turn recognized the Kingdom of Italy, with Rome as its capital, thus ending the situation whereby the popes had felt constrained to remain within the Vatican. They were once again able to visit their cathedral, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, situated on the opposite side of the city of Rome, and to travel regularly to their summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Rome.