Excessive density of buildings. There is no straight line which bisects the Vatican City state in a cardinal direction (North-South or East-West) which doesn’t run through at least one building.
It must also be that at the northern, eastern, southern and western extremes of the Vatican City there is a building. However, that’s not so: the eastern extremity of the Vatican is the eastern side of Saint Peter’s Square, and there you can walk north-south in a straight line without hitting a building inside the Vatican – though if you go a little further south or north you immediately hit a building in Italy.
Looking at the satellite pictures, I don’t think it’s quite true anyway, unless you somehow restrict me from drawing trivial north/south lines. It’s irregularly shaped. You could draw a north / south line through the heliport sticking out on the west end, which appears to simply be an outdoor landing pad. It looks like you might be able to draw north/south lines a little further east, too, still in the tapered area on the west end. Between the radio station and the Ethiopian Seminary looks like it might work in the satellite pictures.
At the western end of the Vatican, I don’t think you can avoid going through a wall with a north-south line – that’s a wall on the southern edge of the helicopter pad – and presumably a wall counts as a “building”.
There’s a wall around the whole place. I was specifically NOT counting walls as buildings. Presumably you scale it, having somehow gotten the Swiss Guards to let you.
No, there’s no wall at the eastern end of St Peter’s Square: there you can walk between Italy and the Vatican without going over a wall or through a building.
Fair enough, but I still won’t count walls as buildings for this exercise. You can’t go “inside” them.
Oh, yes you can. A priest is not allowed to marry, but there’s nothing stopping a married man from becoming a priest.
Like others, I call bullshit, but on a different tack. Singapore is also highly urbanized (a “city-state” if you will), as is Monaco. Can either of those pass that test?
Also not being Catholic is a point against me. (I know, I know, I can convert).
But, if you are correct, my joke about men who have been married for several years being good candidates for the priesthood (implication being that they’re not getting any) holds then!
A weaker claim still consistent with Polycarp’s wording would be that there is one particular cardinal direction (either north-south or east-west) that is completely blocked by buildings.
As for the “straight line” requirement, do we know for sure that this is not true of other, “normal” countries? Ireland is not a very large or densely-populated country, but it’s quite believable that there is no straight north-south line that doesn’t pass through a house or other building.
If we leave out the straight-line requirement, and allow any outdoor route from the northern to the southern border, it becomes likely that the Vatican would be the only example (if indeed it is true of the Vatican).