VATICAN CITY
Independent (UK)
Adam Taylor
Technically, Vatican City is an independent sovereign state. However, it’s far from an ordinary one. A walled enclave in the Italian capital of Rome, the Vatican occupies just 110 acres – a geographical size that makes it the smallest state in the world. Last year, it’s population was estimated to be 842. And this tiny state happens to be the geographical center of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the oldest religious institutions in the world and the largest denomination of the Christian faith, with more than 1.25 billion members worldwide.
So, in a state as unusual as this, how is criminal justice handled?
That’s a pertinent question this week, after the Vatican announced on Monday that it had arrested two members of a papal reform commission on suspicion of leaking classified information. The arrest of Spanish priest Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Italian public relations executive Francesca Chaouqui appeared to be linked to the release of two upcoming books that threatened to contain revelations about alleged fraud and mismanagement in the Catholic church.
The investigation into Balda and Chaouqui is being handled by the Gendarmerie Corps of the Vatican City. These uniformed officers essentially act as the Vatican’s police forces, with their roots in an organization created by Pope Pius VII after the dissolution of the Napoleonic empire in 1816. These days, they work closely with their Italian counterparts under the 85-year-old Lateran Treaty. There are currently about 130 members of the corps: According to the Vatican’s website, candidates for the job have to be unmarried Catholic men between the age of 21 and 25 with a high school diploma and a height of at least 5 feet 8.
The Vatican’s Gendarmerie Corps do not guard the Pope. That duty falls upon the Pontifical Swiss Guard, who act as the Pope’s personal bodyguards and the security service for the Holy See, the political entity of the Catholic Church that is technically distinct from the Vatican City. Otherwise, they care for most of the security, law enforcement and firefighting coordination within the city state – a more taxing duty than you might expect. Despite the Vatican’s small size, it has a remarkably high rate of crimes per capita.
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