About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

83 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 729 (2005-2006)
The Position of the Holy See and Vatican City State in International Relations

handle is hein.journals/udetmr83 and id is 751 raw text is: The Position of the Holy See and Vatican City State in International Relations KURT MARTENS* INTRODUCTION From time to time, people wonder about the status of the Vatican. After the death of Pope John Paul II, not only religious leaders, but also heads of state and government officials traveled to Rome to attend his funeral. The same occurred for the inauguration of his successor, Pope Benedict XVI. How is it possible that a religious leader has the same prerogatives of and is treated as a head of state? Some action groups and some politicians will occasionally debate the status of the Vatican and urge for a revision of that status. At present, Catholics for a Free Choice is still campaigning to change the status of the Holy See at the United Nations.' They claim that the Holy See represents a religion and not a country and should therefore not be a Non-Member State Maintaining Permanent Observer Mission at U.N. Headquarters. According to this campaign, which started in 1999, the status of the Holy See at the United Nations should be reduced to the status of a non-governmental organization (hereinafter NGO). The campaign had quite an amount of world wide press coverage. Supporters of the campaign wrote public opinions in newspapers, sometimes asking for a revision of the status of the Vatican and some governments were urged to break their diplomatic relations between their country and the Vatican.2 Yet this is problematic, since a country does not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, but with the Holy See. In another example in 2005, several members of the Dutch House of Representatives - Van Bommel,3 Timmermans en Koenders4 en Van der Laan5 - asked the Dutch minister of foreign affairs some questions 6 about alleged protection offered by the Vatican to a war criminal. *Assistant Professor, School of Canon Law, The Catholic University of America. 1. This campaign has its own website: http://www.seechange.org. 2. Some Dutch members of the European Parliament called on the government of the Netherlands to break diplomatic relations with the Vatican. L. van der Laan et al., Doorbreek machtspositie Vaticaan, TRouw, 18 Nov. 2000 (Neth.). 3. AANHANGSEL HANDEUNGEN H, No. 170 (2005-2006). 4. AANHANGSEL HANDELINGEN II, No. 171 (2005-2006). 5. AANHANGSEL HANDELINGEN 1I, No. 172 (2005-2006). 6. Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was reported to have said that she believed the Vatican was hiding Croatian general Ante Gotovina, indicted on charges of crimes against humanity

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most