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Capital punishment in Vatican City was legal between 1929 and 1969, reserved for attempted assassination of the Pope, but has never been applied there. [1] Executions were carried out elsewhere in the Papal States, which was the predecessor of the Vatican City, during their existence.
The death penalty had support from early Catholic theologians, though some of them such as Saint Ambrose encouraged members of the clergy not to pronounce or carry out capital punishment. Saint Augustine answered objections to capital punishment rooted in the first commandment in The City of God . [2] Augustine's argument is as such: "Since the agent of authority is but a sword in the hand [of God], it is in no way contrary to the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' for the representative of the state's authority to put criminals to death". [3] Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus argued that civil authority to carry out capital punishment was supported by scripture. [2]
Pope Innocent III required Peter Waldo and the Waldensians to accept that "secular power can, without mortal sin, exercise judgement of blood, provided that it punishes with justice, not out of hatred, with prudence, not precipitation" as a prerequisite for reconciliation with the church. [2] During the Middle Ages and into the modern period, the Inquisition was authorized by the Holy See to turn over heretics to secular authority for execution, and the Papal States carried out executions for a variety of offences. [2]
The Roman Catechism (1566) codified the teaching that God had entrusted civil authorities with the power over life and death. [2] Doctors of the Church Robert Bellarmine and Alphonsus Liguori, as well as modern theologians such as Francisco de Vitoria, Thomas More, and Francisco Suárez continued this tradition; Pope Pius XII issued an allocution to medical experts to that effect. [2]
The Lateran Treaty of 1929 copied from the contemporaneous Italian legal code (concerning attempted assassinations of the King of Italy), providing for capital punishment for anyone who attempted to assassinate the pope within Vatican City. [1] Article 8 of the Lateran Treaty provides:
Considering the person of the Supreme Pontiff to be sacred and inviolable, Italy declares any attempt against His person or any incitement to commit such attempt to be punishable by the same penalties as all similar attempts and incitements to commit the same against the person of the King.
All offences or public insults committed within Italian territory against the person of the Supreme Pontiff, whether by means of speeches, acts, or writings, shall be punished in the same manner as offences and insults against the person of the King. [4]
There were no attempted assassinations of the pope within Vatican City while the statute was on the books. [5] It was no longer in force in 1981, when Mehmet Ali Ağca attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II, and in any case Ağca was tried by an Italian court rather than in the Vatican.
Pope Paul VI removed the capital punishment statute from the "fundamental law" of Vatican City in 1969, along with other adaptations, four years after closing the Second Vatican Council, announcing the change only in the August 1969 issue of the Gazette , which is published in Latin. [1] The change came to public attention only in January 1971 after reporters accused Paul VI of hypocrisy for his criticisms of planned executions in Spain and the Soviet Union. [1] [5]
Mehmet Ali Ağca is a Turkish assassin who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on 1 February 1979, and later shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981, after escaping from a Turkish prison.
Pope Benedict XIII, born Pietro Francesco Orsini and later called Vincenzo Maria Orsini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 29 May 1724 to his death in February 1730.
The politics of Vatican City take place in a framework of a theocratic absolute elective monarchy, in which the Pope, religiously speaking, the leader of the Catholic Church and Bishop of Rome, exercises ex officio supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power over the Vatican City, a rare case of non-hereditary monarchy.
The Vatican City State is a neutral nation, which has not engaged in any war since its formation in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty. It has no formal military compact or agreement with neighbouring Italy, although responsibility for defending the Vatican City from an international aggressor is likely to lie primarily with the Italian Armed Forces. When presenting the Lateran Treaty to the Italian parliament in 1929, Benito Mussolini declared: "It is evident that we [the Italian state] will be the necessary guarantors of this neutrality and inviolability [of Vatican City], since, in the remote hypothesis someone wanted to hurt her, he would first have to violate our territory." Although the Vatican City State has never been at war, its forces were exposed to military aggression when it was bombed during World War II, and whilst defending Vatican property in Rome during the same conflict.
A prisoner in the Vatican or prisoner of the Vatican described the situation of the pope with respect to Italy during the period from the capture of Rome by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy on 20 September 1870 until the Lateran Treaty of 11 February 1929. Part of the process of Italian unification, the city's capture ended the millennium-old temporal rule of the popes over central Italy and allowed Rome to be designated the capital of the new nation. Although the Italians did not occupy the territories of Vatican Hill delimited by the Leonine walls and offered the creation of a city-state in the area, the popes from Pius IX to Pius XI refused the proposal and described themselves as prisoners of the new Italian state.
The major world religions have taken varied positions on the morality of capital punishment and as such, they have historically impacted the way in which governments handle such punishment practices. Although the viewpoints of some religions have changed over time, their influence on capital punishment generally depends on the existence of a religious moral code and how closely religion influences the government. Religious moral codes are often based on a body of teachings, such as the Old Testament or the Qur'an.
The Roman question was a dispute regarding the temporal power of the popes as rulers of a civil territory in the context of the Italian Risorgimento. It ended with the Lateran Pacts between King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Pope Pius XI in 1929.
Camillo Cibin was a Papal bodyguard and Inspector General of the Corpo della Gendarmeria, the security and police force of Vatican City. He retired in 2006 after 58 years of service in the security force, and over 40 years as its commander. He served as a bodyguard to six popes.
On 13 May 1981, in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. The Pope was struck twice and suffered severe blood loss. Ağca was apprehended immediately and later sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court. The Pope later forgave Ağca for the assassination attempt. He was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi at the Pope's request and was deported to Turkey in June 2000. Ağca converted to Roman Catholicism in 2007.
Vatican during the Savoyard era describes the relation of the Vatican to Italy, after 1870, which marked the end of the Papal States, and 1929, when the papacy regained autonomy in the Lateran Treaty, a period dominated by the Roman Question.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law, also called the Johanno-Pauline Code, is the "fundamental body of ecclesiastical laws for the Latin Church". It is the second and current comprehensive codification of canonical legislation for the Latin Church of the Catholic Church. It was promulgated on 25 January 1983 by John Paul II and took legal effect on the First Sunday of Advent 1983. It replaced the 1917 Code of Canon Law which had been promulgated by Benedict XV on 27 May 1917.
Crime in the Vatican City consists largely of purse snatching, pick-pocketing and shoplifting perpetrated by tourists upon other tourists. The tourist foot-traffic in St. Peter's Square is one of the main locations for pickpockets in Vatican City.
The Ten Commandments are series of religious and moral imperatives that are recognized as a moral foundation in several of the Abrahamic religions, including the Catholic Church. As described in the Old Testament books Exodus and Deuteronomy, the Commandments form part of a covenant offered by God to the Israelites to free them from the spiritual slavery of sin. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church—the official exposition of the Catholic Church's Christian beliefs—the Commandments are considered essential for spiritual good health and growth, and serve as the basis for Catholic social teaching. A review of the Commandments is one of the most common types of examination of conscience used by Catholics before receiving the sacrament of Penance.
The position of the Catholic Church on capital punishment has varied throughout history, with the Church becoming significantly more critical of the practice since the mid-20th century. In 2018, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was revised to read that "in the light of the Gospel" the death penalty is "inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person" and that the Catholic Church "works with determination for its abolition worldwide."
The Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo, or the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo from its Italian name Palazzo Apostolico di Castel Gandolfo, is a 135-acre (54.6-ha) complex of buildings in a garden setting in the city of Castel Gandolfo, Italy, including the principal 17th-century villa, an observatory and a farmhouse with 75 acres (30.4 ha) of farmland. The main structure, the Papal Palace, has been a museum since October 2016. It served for centuries as a summer residence and vacation retreat for the pope, the leader of the Catholic Church, and is afforded extraterritorial status as one of the properties of the Holy See. It overlooks Lake Albano.
The papal nobility are the aristocracy of the Holy See, composed of persons holding titles bestowed by the Pope. From the Middle Ages into the nineteenth century, the papacy held direct temporal power in the Papal States, and many titles of papal nobility were derived from fiefs with territorial privileges attached. During this time, the Pope also bestowed ancient civic titles such as patrician. Today, the Pope still exercises authority to grant titles with territorial designations, although these are purely nominal and the privileges enjoyed by the holders pertain to styles of address and heraldry. Additionally, the Pope grants personal and familial titles that carry no territorial designation. Their titles being merely honorific, the modern papal nobility includes descendants of ancient Roman families as well as notable Catholics from many different countries. All pontifical noble titles are within the personal gift of the pontiff, and are not recorded in the Official Acts of the Holy See.
Capital punishment in the Bible refers to instances in the Bible where death is called for as a punishment and also instances where it is proscribed or prohibited. A case against capital punishment can be made from John 8, where Jesus speaks words that can be construed as condemning the practice. There are however many more Bible verses that command and condone capital punishment, and examples of it being carried out. Sins that were punishable by death include homicide, striking one's parents, kidnapping, cursing one's parents, witchcraft and divination, bestiality, worshiping other gods, violating the Sabbath, child sacrifice, adultery, incest, and male homosexual intercourse.
Pascite gregem Dei is an apostolic constitution issued by Pope Francis on 1 June 2021 which reforms Book VI of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. It took effect on 8 December 2021.
