Law of Guarantees

The Law of Guarantees (Legge delle guarentigie), sometimes also called the Law of Papal Guarantees, was the name given to the law passed by the senate and chamber of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, 13 May, 1871, concerning the prerogatives of the Holy See, and the relations between state and church in the Kingdom of Italy. It guaranteed sovereign prerogatives to the pope, who had been deprived of the territory of the Papal States. The popes refused to accept the law, as it was enacted by a foreign government and could therefore be revoked at will, leaving the popes without a full claim to sovereign status. In response, the popes declared themselves prisoners of the Vatican. The ensuing Roman Question was not resolved until the Lateran Pacts of 1929. For a time, the most serious question that confronted Italy after 1870 was the hostility between Church and State. The Italian government, which had declared that it entered Rome to safeguard the person of the Holy Father, and which, in the very act of invading pontifical territory, had assured the people that the independence of the Holy See would remain inviolate, felt obliged to secure in a legal and solemn way the executions of its aforesaid intention. It owed no less to its own Catholic subjects, and to Catholics the world over. Two ways were open to it for keeping its promise. It might call an international congress of all nations having a very large Catholic population, or it might pass a domestic Italian law. A circular of the minister Emilio Visconti Venosta, addressed to all the powers, hinted at the former solution. But the lack of reaction by foreign Catholic governments to the occupation of Rome put an end to all thought of consulting them; and so a domestic law was passed. Before its adoption, however, Pope Pius IX, by a letter of his cardinal vicar, dated 2 March, 1871, protested against the law "in which", he said, "it was no easy task to decide whether absurdity, cunning, or contempt played the largest part".