Mussolini's boasted that the Lateran Treaty would “bury” the worldly power of the pope, but it permitted just the opposite, even serving as a springboard to vault the Church into international bodies. And as a comedienne discovered in 2008, this Treaty still threatens Italians with five years in prison for a joke about the Pope.
Until 1860 Pope Pius IX ruled over his Papal States which stretched across the Italian peninsula, dividing it in two. The following year, when urged to accept a peaceful settlement to avoid an armed assault he indignantly refused. Even after the Pope's subjects voted overwhelmingly to join Italy, he remained adamant: “This corner of the earth is mine; I received it from Christ”. [1]
In 1871 Italy was finally unified by absorbing the Papal States. The Pope, now deposed as King of Rome, retreated behind the walls of the Vatican, where he continued to fight the Italian state with every means at his disposal.
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