Paradigms in the International Legal Personality of the Holy See from the Congress of Vienna to the Lateran Pact

Margittay-Mészáros, Árpád (2024) Paradigms in the International Legal Personality of the Holy See from the Congress of Vienna to the Lateran Pact. RUSSIAN LAW JOURNAL, 12 (2). pp. 3206-3213. ISSN 2309-8678 (print); 2312-3605 (online)

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Abstract

The range of subjects of international law has expanded significantly since the Middle Ages to the present day. Starting from the end of the 19th century, a number of scientific trends emerged in international jurisprudence as to who the subjects of international law are. The subject of the most complicated question in the 20th century was who, apart from states, are the individual subjects of international law and to what extent. The question of the international legal personality of the Apostolic See has generated many different paradigms in international jurisprudence. The international legal position of the Holy See had neither been a scientific nor practical question for many centuries. This is so true that despite the end of the States of the Church, at the Congress of Vienna, the international community itself considered the Holy See not only a subject of international law, but a part of it on an equal footing with civilized states. The Congress of Vienna itself proved that, from the point of view of the international legal personality of the Holy See, it is completely indifferent whether the Pope is a secular ruler in a state or not. At that time, it was already clearly proven that the international legal status of the Holy See is not coherent with whether or not there is a state under the sovereignty of the Pope. On the other hand, it is much more certain that from the point of view of international legal personality, the legal personality of a state falling under the sovereignty of the Holy See is secondary to a certain degree, since even the Congress of Vienna itself returned the territories of the later Papal States to the possession of the Holy See herself from an international legal point of view. The dilemmas that followed the Congress of Vienna were generated by the end of the Papal States in 1870. It can be said that even the Italian State itself could not create a perfect solution. It must be emphasized that the Kingdom of Italy itself treated the Holy See and the Papal States separately from aninternational legal point of view. The Italian nationalist unification efforts were clearly only aimed at acquiring state territory. Not only did Italy not dispute the international legal personality of the Pope and the Holy See, it caused a serious problem for the Italian State as to how the situation could be distinguished. Later on, the solution of the Roman Question was not coincidentally in the interest of Italy as well. Despite being a fully sovereign international legal entity, the Holy See lacks territorial sovereignty like the states. Therefore, the actual safeguarding of her sovereignty has occasionally presented practical problems. At the same time, until the conclusion of the Lateran Pact, jurisprudence even considered the complete denial of theinternational legal personality of the Holy See possible. The purpose of this study is to shed light on some theoretical and practical issues related to the international status and legal personality of the Holy See, from the Congress of Vienna to the conclusion of the Lateran Pact. In international jurisprudence, in fact, in many cases it is not possible to clearly decide to what extent individual paradigm shifts were actually in line with international jurisprudence. In many cases, the individual paradigms with regard to the international legal personality of the Holy See show several inconsistencies with actual jurisprudence.

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