A Visit To The Vatican

Vatican City — Country number 93.

I remembering being a kid in my religious ed class in Albion, New York being told that the Vatican was were the pope lived and how it was a city and a country all rolled into one. The teacher showed us a map of this red dot completely encapsulated in the bosom of Italy and I have to admit that it didn’t look like any sort of country that I’ve ever seen before. It was smaller than my dinky little Western New York canal town. It was inside of another country. It wasn’t much more than a church. How could that be a country?

What I didn’t know then was that nobody really knows what a country is.

Seriously.

What a country is or isn’t depends on who you’re asking — or, more accurately, what political entity you’re asking. Taiwan functions completely independently from the PRC and is administered by the direct political descendants of the government which once ruled just about all of China. Taiwan controls its own borders, runs its own customs, has its own military, it’s own currency, its own airlines, its own foreign policy, it’s own … everything. But,= according to 99% of the nation states on the planet, it’s not a country and is tossed into the same bucket as Transnistria, Abkhazia, and Elgaland-Vargaland.

Meanwhile, the countries of the EU, who don’t control their own customs and immigration, don’t mint their own currency, don’t have their own passports, can’t negotiate their own trade deals, don’t have their own monetary policy, don’t control their international destinies, and can’t even script their own product safety and environmental policies are considered independent and sovereign states.

The term “country,” is political. It’s subjective. It’s pliable. It’s bullshit.

To me, if it seems like a country, it’s a country. While I have to admit that this isn’t the most fail safe of definitions, it’s probably just as good as “we’re not going to call this a country because some jerkoff in Beijing will get mad at us if we do.”

Why is the Vatican a country?

The Vatican is a country because it is a sovereign state recognized under international law, established through the Lateran Treaty signed on February 11, 1929, between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy. This treaty resolved the “Roman Question,” a decades-long dispute that began in 1870 when the Kingdom of Italy captured the Papal States, leaving the Pope feeling imprisoned within the Vatican walls. The treaty granted the Vatican City State full sovereignty, allowing the Holy See to maintain its independence, diplomatic relations, and spiritual authority.

Vatican City functions as a fully independent nation with its own government, territory, laws, currency, flag, postal system, and national anthem. It is governed as a theocratic absolute monarchy led by the Pope, who serves as the head of state.

In some ways the history of Taiwan does actually mirror that of the Vatican. A controlling entity is almost completely vanquished by a more powerful foe who leaves it with a sliver of turf upon which to continue existence. Where the story diverges is that the Kingdom of Italy seemed to have left the Vatican independent by choice rather than via a decades-long standoff at a chain of small islands and the inability of the PRC to fully win its civil war.

The Vatican is the smallest country on earth. Coming in at just 108 acres and a population that hardly tops 1,000.

I made the excuse to my wife that I wanted to go to the Vatican because it would make my mom happy. I don’t talk about religion with her. She has always seemed threatened by my Catholic upbringing — she has it in her head that Christians like to kill Jews — so it’s not something that I bring up very often.

When we first got married she was enthusiastic for me to adopt her Judaism, but the type that I was exposed to early on didn’t resonate with me. Reform Judaism — or liberal Judaism or progressive Judaism — seemed like more of a celebration of culture than a path to God. And the more serious sects that I would be more spiritually in tune with would be hard-pressed to truly accept me, a bonafide gentile.

While I’ve explored many paths to God throughout my studies and travels, I’ve ultimately concluded that the most direct, most vibrant route is the religion you’re born with. Spirituality is something that’s acculturated into you when you first constructed your initial worldview, and the wiring that’s installed during this time is set throughout your entire life … and those pathways can be triggered more deeply and kinetically than wiring that’s laid later on …

It’s all just infinite pathways leading to the same place anyway.

We researched visiting the Vatican about as well as we research anything else in travel — which is to say, not at all. Our MO: just show up. We arrived and and walked around the massive Piazza San Pietro for a while and eventually found a line of people waiting for something. We assumed correctly that this was the way in. It was a bright, sunny day … around 70 degrees — perfect. We wove our way up to the security gate — which basically just served the function of keeping tourists from hauling their giant rucksacks into the church and showing too much knee / breast / stomach — and made our way into the complex.

We entered through the Vatican Grottoes, which is a series of underground passageways containing various forms of art — frescoes, mosaics, sculptures, inscriptions — and the tombs of 91 popes, various royals, and, behind the alter in the Clémentine Chapel, the tomb of St. Peter. Many of the tombs contained life-sized stone carvings of the popes within laying upon the marble or slate boxes. I lit a candle.

St. Peter’s Basilica is without question one of the most magnificent buildings on earth. It is the largest church in the world by volume … and is so beautiful that it’s almost difficult to look at. The gold trimming, the frescos on the ceiling, the statues of saints, the carved marble pillars, the windows emitting beams of light which cut through to the floor … Religious buildings are conduits.

I then tried to go in search for the rest of the Vatican … and I didn’t find it. For some reason I thought there would be at least a little square with a few little streets with vendors and restaurants that we could hang out in … but that didn’t seem to exist. It really is just a big cathedral complex, a museum, and some gardens which I hear are enthralling although I didn’t go to them.