I was browsing around Wikipedia, clicking on links, like you do, when I found myself on this page, which describes the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl who was a citizen of the Vatican.
Since I had been under the impression that all citizens of the Vatican were clergymen, I was surprised. I checked out Wikipedia’s entry for Vatican demographics.
Who are these 43 other people? What the heck are they doing there? Have theit families had Vatican citizenship for years, or are they naturalized citizens?
It was years ago, but I have been to the Vatican. It seems like it would be a pretty weird place to live and I am curious.
Your Wikipedia link explains that at Vatican citizenship operates somewhat differently than other national citizenships. For those 43, it would be connected to employment by the Vatican, and terminated along with said employment:
The father of the girl in question was a Vatican employee, a messenger. I’m going to hazard a guess that most employees who receive Vatican citizenship do so because it is advantageous to have them travel under Vatican passport. All Vatican passports are diplomatic passports, BTW.
The Vatican doesn’t have its own criminal code. The Italian criminal code applies in the Vatican City State. The age of consent under the Italian criminal code is generally 14.
The Swiss Guards who reach the rank of corporal or higher are permitted to marry. Their wives and children may make up at least a few of those oddball 43.
eta: I’m actually finding conflicting information on which Swiss Guards are allowed to marry. New recruits are certainly not, but longer-serving members can. Not that they have a whole lot of time for dating in any case…
So would I, as a married person, not be permitted to go off and join the Swiss Guard then? (Ignoring the fact I’m not Catholic (Protestant)) I also can’t be a priest, which again is short-sighted - who better to expect to live a life of celibacy than a guy whose been married for over a decade?
You have to be Swiss, Catholic, male, single, aged between (I think) 18 and 30 and have completed basic training in the Swiss national forces. And there are medical requirements.
If you’re married, you’re by definition not celibate. Neither celibacy nor chastity means abstinence from sexual intercourse: Chastity means you don’t have sex outside of marriage, and is expected of everyone, and celibacy means not marrying, and is a requirement for the priesthood and monastic orders. The combination of the two, of course, means that you won’t be having any sex.
What are living arrangements inside the Vatican like? I imagine for the Swiss Guard it’s barracks, but do the rest of the “citizens” live in Vatican-provided apartments?
It may not apply in some cases, or be all that strange in others.
Note that the original breakdown of citizens in the OP’s post and the sources we’ve been linking to mention that many of the clergy citizens reside outside the Vatican. I would suspect that it is the same for many non-clergy citizens carrying citizenship because of employment.
Even if living inside the Vatican, they are, in effect, living in Rome. The kidnapped girl took a bus to a school in Rome everyday, and no doubt spent a lot of time outside the boundaries of the Vatican. The Vatican is a “sovereign state”, but so tiny that much of the support structure for modern life has to be provided by Italy. The Vatican citizens and some 3000 lay workers employed by the Vatican who are not citizens pretty much pass in and out of the Vatican at will. It’s not like they have to go through customs all the time to go about their daily lives. I suspect they may have to show an id at some point, but that’s not terribly different than working or living in a building with security.
I’ve also heard somewhere that the Vatican is so tiny ([Tonight Show audience]How tiny is it?[/Tonight Show audience]) … it’s so tiny that most of the embassies to the Vatican, including the Italian one, are on Italian soil! (Despite the “How tiny is it?” that I couldn’t resist, it wasn’t meant as humour, I seriously learned that somewhere)
Distinguish between “the Vatican” and Vatican City. The former is a Papal palace (mostly occupied by Curia offices, of course, just as Buckingham Palace is mostly the Queen’s staff’s workplaces, not a ‘palace’ in the fairy-tale sense) attached to St. Peter’s. The latter is a political entity within Rome, an independent nation with geographic boundaries. Something like 40% of the area of Vatican City is occupied by the Vatican and St. Peter’s, but it does extend well beyond the building walls in two directions. (Trivia note: it’s the only nation in the world that you cannot cross in one cardinal direction outdoors.)
There really isn’t much room for anything once you remove the area occupied by official buildings, museums, monuments, gardens and the like. The area of the Vatican city in total is 0.17 square miles. Roughly on the order of 50 city blocks (recognizing that city block sizes vary a lot. I used 300 x 300 feet).
True. In fact, substitute “all” for “most”. Several of them are located along the streets that lead to the public entrances to the Vatican on St Peter’s Square.
This page includes an official map, and as you can see - it’s a tiny place. St Peter’s Square, St Peter’s Basilica, and the large palace that contain the Vatican Museums dominate the place. All the other buildings are filled up with residences and offices for things like the Vatican postal service and the television and radio services. There’s no place left for embassies unless they pave over the gardens…
Most of them don’t live in the Vatican. They work in Vatican institutions, which may or may not be situtated within the Vatican City State - the Vatican owns/controls plenty of buildings outside its own territory. The major offices and departments of the Curia mostly have addresses outside the Vatican.
The more senior appointments do get apartments with the job; these are not necessarily located within the Vatican City State, and in fact mostly aren’t.
The Swiss Guards live in a barracks which is within the Vatican City State.
Of about 550 Vatican citizens, about 250 are authorised to live in the Vatican (and about a hundred of these are the Swiss Guard). About 3,000 people live in Vatican-owned accommodation outside the Vatican itself; this would include most of the 300 Vatican citizens who don’t live in the Vatican, but the bulk of them are either members of religious congregations residing in Vatican-owned monasteries, convents, etc, students and staff residing in Vatican-owned colleges or seminaries, or employees of the Vatican whose jobs are not senior enough to carry citizenship, and (in the case of lay employees) their families.