One of the reasons a person may be stripped of US citizenship is by swearing allegiance to a foreign power. (Usually by serving in that power’s military, but not necessarily.) When a US citizen becomes the head of state of a sovereign power, allegiance is perhaps absolute by definition.
Not that I imagine anyone is going to seriously suggest stripping Pope Leo of his US citizenship. The optics of that would likely be peculiarly bad. But the idea of multiple citizenship becomes pretty strained.
If the Titles of Nobility Amendment has actually been ratified, loss of citizenship would likely have been automatic without the explicit approval of Congress. Given becoming Pope occurs the moment the elected Cardinal says he accepts the position, this would have required a retrospective approval by congress. Which would have been fun to watch.
The same would probably have been true for being appointed a cardinal. Depends upon how one defines a noble title. Pope is hard not to consider a noble title. But one could probably argue the point. Noble titles are usually separate to ecclesiastic titles. But they are very closely aligned. A duck argument might be enough.
Vatican City is considered a sovereign state, so the pope has the same status as any visiting national leader would. In addition, he is still revered by many in this country. I’m sure he would be treated with the greatest respect and receive the treatment that his status deserves.
As a practical matter, if you show up at the border with a diplomatic passport and you’re allowed entry with that passport, you have diplomatic immunity for the duration of that visit.
Indeed, it appears so. What is odd is how I turned up such loss commentary on a US government site. (I think it was anyway.) Maybe they still like to scare people.
Sometimes I wish it didn’t.
SovCit: I am not an American citizen.
Judge: We have that on record so please join the nice people from ICE so we can deport you to Norh Korea.
There’s the episode with Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested in Britain on a charges from an international warrant from Spain, that as head of Chile he had arranged the murder of Spanish (dual?) citizens during .the infamous coup and reign of terror. IIRC the law was that killing a Spanish citizen was a crime Spain could prosecute no matter where it happened.
That time, he got away by claiming Alzheimers… And was no longer head of state.But presumably Spain did not recognize soveriegn immunity, that acts by a head of state could not be prosecuted in another country.
It seems the Pope has a sort of double diplomatic immunity.
As the sovereign head of Vatican City State (a recognized independent state), the Pope enjoys the standard diplomatic protections accorded to heads of state under international law.
Also, as the head of the Holy See (the universal government of the Catholic Church), the Pope has diplomatic immunity through the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, which established formal diplomatic immunity for Vatican diplomats.
So, to the OP, yes he does (all Popes do since at least 1929).
The rule hasn’t changed: what changed is the understanding of the rule.
You loose citizenship if you intentionally take an act of depatriation. The position now is that the intentionality of the act is separate from the intentionality of depatriation.
If you look further, you can find information about how to get the U.S. government to recognize depatriation, which is important because U.S. banking and tax regulations apply to people that the U.S. govenement recognizes as U.S. nationals.
A further complication is that my country (Australia) recognizes the U.S. government recognition of citizenship … I can’t run for Australian federal office while the U.S. government recognizes me as a citizen.
The rule didn’t change – taking foreign citizenship is a depatriating act – but now I have to prove to the U.S. government that I intend the act to be a depatriating act.
Somewhat off topic, but I wonder what the papal salary is. You Americans are weird about taxing foreign earnings. He could be in quite a complex financial situation.
Of course, the church can afford to pay to “make it go away”.
In the case of the pope, the foreign power just swore allegiance to him. If I were a president who enjoyed trolling my critics on social media, I would post a tweet declaring that we have just annexed the Vatican State.
… I can’t run for Australian federal office while the U.S. government recognizes me as a citizen.