Crime in Vatican City

There are 18 million visitors[3] to the state each year, and the most common crime is petty theft — purse snatching, pick-pocketing and shoplifting — typically perpetrated and suffered by outsiders.

[1] The Corpo della Gendarmeria dello Stato della Città del Vaticano (English: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City State) is the gendarmerie, or police and security force, of Vatican City and the extraterritorial properties of the Holy See.

[7][8] In accordance with article 3 of the 1929 Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, St. Peter's Square, although part of the Vatican City State, is normally patrolled by the Italian police, up to but not including the steps leading to the basilica.

[9] Article 22 of the Lateran Treaty provides that the Italian government, when requested by the Holy See, seeks prosecution and detention of criminal suspects, at the expense of the Vatican.

It had been envisaged in legislation Vatican City adopted in 1929 based on Italian law[citation needed], but the power was never exercised.

According to the official Vatican version, Estermann and his wife, Gladys Meza Romero, were killed by the young Swiss Guard Cédric Tornay, who later committed suicide.

Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, head of the Institute for Religious Works from 1971 to 1989, was indicted[citation needed] in Italy in 1981 as an accessory in the $3.5 billion collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, one of the major post-war financial scandals.

The scandal first came to light in January 2012, when Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi published letters from Carlo Maria Viganò, formerly the second-ranked Vatican administrator to the pope, in which he begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions in higher contract prices.