Unitary absolute monarchy under an ecclesiastical and elective theocracy
Status in OTL:
Active
The State of the Vatican City is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome. At approximately 44 hectares (108.7 acres), it is the smallest independent nation in the world.
It was created in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756 to 1870). Vatican City is a non-hereditary, elected monarchy that is ruled by the Bishop of Rome — the Pope. The highest state functionaries are all clergymen of the Catholic Church, and the Vatican is the only country in the world where Catholic clergymen are permitted by canon law to hold political office. Vatican City can be said to be the governmental capital of the Catholic Church.
The Vatican was one of the only countries in the world that was not communist. Despite communism's anti-religious stance, the Soviet Union also realized the importance of religion to nearly every country's sense of national identity, and so left the Vatican and Catholicism alone.[2]
Under PopePius XII, the Vatican cooperated with the Race shortly after the Conquest FleetinvadedEarth in the summer of 1942. Due to the collaboration of Pius and the Vatican, Race administrators had an easier time ruling territories heavily populated by Catholics. Because of this, the leaders of the Big Five discussed having Pius assassinated, a threat later carried out by the Germans in January 1944 when they detonated an explosive-metal bomb in Rome, destroying the Vatican and killing Pius.
