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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.
As Vatican City is a sacerdotal-monarchical state ruled by the Pope, who is the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church its laws are influenced by Church teaching.
The moral liceity of 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]
The Roman Catechism (1566) codified the teaching that God had entrusted civil authorities with the power over life and death. [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]
Over the 20th and 21st centuries the Church has clarified that the death penalty should only be handed out when and where it is necessary to protect society. Since 2018, the Church officially teaches that the death penalty is not necessary and is therefore inadmissible. Additionally, "she works with determination for its abolition worldwide" [4]
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. [5]
There were no attempted assassinations of the pope within Vatican City while the statute was in force. [6] It was already repealed by 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 had accused Paul VI of hypocrisy for his criticisms of planned executions in Spain and the Soviet Union. [1] [6]
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 where he was held following İpekçi's murder.
The magisterium of the Catholic Church is the church's authority or office to give authentic interpretation of the word of God, "whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition". According to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the task of interpretation is vested uniquely in the Pope and the bishops, though the concept has a complex history of development. Scripture and Tradition "make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church", and the magisterium is not independent of this, since "all that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is derived from this single deposit of faith".
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.28 to 1.39 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2024. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization. The church consists of 24 sui iuris churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The Diocese of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small independent city-state and enclave within the Italian capital city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state.
Catholic social teaching (CST) is an area of Catholic doctrine which is concerned with human dignity and the common good in society. It addresses oppression, the role of the state, subsidiarity, social organization, social justice, and wealth distribution. CST's foundations are considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum, which advocated distributism. Its roots can be traced to Catholic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo. CST is also derived from the Bible and cultures of the ancient Near East.
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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.
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 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. The 1983 Code of Canon Law 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.
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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 early to 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."
Thou shalt not kill, You shall not murder or Do not murder (CSB), is a moral imperative included as one of the Ten Commandments in the Torah.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, excommunication is a form of censure. In the formal sense of the term, excommunication includes being barred not only from the sacraments but also from the fellowship of Christian baptism. The principal and severest censure, excommunication presupposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Catholic Church can inflict, it supposes a grave offense. The excommunicated person is considered by Catholic ecclesiastical authority as an exile from the Church, for a time at least.
The Christian tradition has generally proscribed any and all noncoital genital activities, whether engaged in by couples or individuals, regardless of whether they were of the same or different sex. The position of the Roman Catholic Church with regards to homosexuality developed from the writings of Paul the Apostle and the teachings of the Church Fathers. These were in stark contrast to contemporary Greek and Roman attitudes towards same-sex relations which were more relaxed.
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.
