Concord Day in Italy

It was a Monday afternoon—11 February 1929—and raining on Rome’s Campidoglio when the city’s Governor, Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi, appeared at the balustrade of the ornamental staircase of the Palazzo Senatorio to make a startling announcement.

At 1200pm that day, with no public notice, Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini and Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, then serving as Camerlengo (“chief officer”) and Secretary of State under Pope Pius XI, had signed in the Lateran Palace a treaty that solved the decades-long “Roman Question” between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See. For the first time since the Pope became a “prisoner of the Vatican” on 20 September 1870, the Holy See now recognized Italy’s statehood with Rome as its capital. And Italy granted to the Holy See its own territory, over which it confirmed the sovereignty of the Pope.

The Lateran Treaty was one component of the Lateran Pacts of 1929, agreements between the Kingdom of Italy under King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and the Holy See under Pope Pius XI to settle the long-standing Roman Question. The treaty and associated pacts were named after the Lateran Palace where they were signed on 11 February 1929, and the Italian parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929. The treaty recognized Vatican City as an independent state under the sovereignty of the Holy See. The Italian government also agreed to give the Roman Catholic Church financial compensation for the loss of the Papal States. In 1948, the Lateran Treaty was recognized in the Constitution of Italy as regulating the relations between the state and the Catholic Church.