Law of Guarantees

[note 2] A circular of the minister Emilio Visconti Venosta, addressed to all major Catholic powers, hinted at ensuring these intentions by means of an international congress.

In a letter from his cardinal vicar dated 2 March 1871, Pope Pius IX protested against the law, saying that "it was no easy task to decide whether absurdity, cunning, or contempt played the largest part" in its passage.

[2] The pope was declared an independent sovereign and, as such, was entitled to receive and to send ambassadors and to conduct diplomatic affairs without any interference from the Italian government.

The palaces, churches, museums, offices, villas, and gardens in the Leonine City were to be exempt from taxation, and the Papal government was to have free use of the Italian railway, postal, and telegraph systems.

Pius IX, moreover, was unwilling to accept formally the arrangements made concerning the relations of Church and State, especially the Exequatur and the administration of ecclesiastical property.

Doubtless, too, such acceptance on his part would have been interpreted as at least a tacit recognition of accomplished facts, as a renunciation of the temporal power, and the property which had been taken from the Holy See (e.g., the Quirinal Palace).

[3] This policy was adopted after a period of uncertainty and of controversy which followed the Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy (1861), and which was intensified by laws hostile to the Church and, especially, to the religious orders (1865–66).

On the contrary, as many people came to the conclusion that the decree Non Expedit was not intended to be absolute, but was only an admonition made to apply upon one particular occasion, the Holy Office declared (30 Dec., 1886) that the rule in question implied a grave precept, and emphasis was given to this fact on several subsequent occasions (Letter of Leo XIII to the Cardinal Secretary of State, 14 May 1895; Congregation of Extraordinary Affairs, 27 January 1902; Pius X, Motu proprio, 18 Dec., 1903).

Later Pope Pius X, by his encyclical "Il fermo proposito" (11 June 1905) modified the Non Expedit, declaring that, when there was question of preventing the election of a "subversive" candidate, the bishops could ask for a suspension of the rule, and invite the Catholics to hold themselves in readiness to go to the polls.

[8] The question arose as to whether this untouched endowment would be confiscated by the Italian treasury at the end of every five years, as is usual with other public debts of the Kingdom of Italy.

[5] At first the situation appeared embarrassing or even dangerous to Italians, who feared that France or Austria might champion the cause of the Pope and compel Italy to evacuate Rome.

But the defeat of these two Catholic nations by Prussia and, especially, the establishment of an anticlerical Republic in France, made such an event only a remote possibility, and the "Prisoner of the Vatican" became a polite fiction.

As time went on there began a rapprochement between the Vatican and the Quirinal,[note 4] though, in theory, the successors of Pius IX continued to advocate the restoration of their temporal power.