RELIGION, LAW AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY Vatican City State and Covid-19 emergency by Matteo Carnì* m.carnì@lumsa.it 1. The smallest State in the world and Covid-19 emergency The quick and aggressive outbreak from Covid-19 that spread across the planet did not spare Vatican City, the smallest State in the world created in 1929 to guarantee the Holy See “absolute independence for the fulfillment of His high mission in the world”. The finalistic element underlying the institution of Vatican City allows us to understand the qualifications of the Civitas Vaticana that have been offered over time: State-medium, Instrumental State, Apparatus State. This naturally does not detract from the character of a true State that it possesses, nor does it undermine that purpose which is proper and characteristic of every political society, namely the pursuit of the common good of the affiliates. Vatican City is developed in an area of just 0.44 square kilometers, inside the city of Rome. This is unique reality compared to other traditional constitutive elements of each state, namely the people and sovereignty1. The Vatican people is composed by Vatican citizens. Vatican citizenship, which is granted for the free determination of sovereign authority, is a functional * Professor of Canon Law LUMSA University (Rome) 1 On constitutive elements, see G. DALLA TORRE, Lezioni di diritto vaticano, Torino, 2018. 1 VATICAN CITY STATE AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY|wwww.diresom.net – 27 APRILE 2020 RELIGION, LAW AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY citizenship, issued mainly from the office covered by each citizen in the Vatican State or in the Roman Curia. Vatican sovereignty belongs to the Holy See, understood in the most restricted sense of the Roman Pontiff. The Pope is in fact the absolute monarch, bringing together all the powers (legislative, executive and judicial), even if ordinarily he does not exercise them directly but through the permanent entrustment to organs that, with distinct competences, perform the related functions. We are in the presence of a single state reality, in which there is no real stable population and no social classes and political or cultural currents. Hence the inopportunity of any definition of Vatican City as a theocratic or hierocratic state since the Civitas Vaticana, while presenting a priestly caste in a pre-eminent position with respect to citizens, is nothing but a “great ecclesiastical apparatus that governs itself”, without therefore oppress their own population in the name of a certain religious creed as happens instead in true theocratic states2. To the aforementioned constitutive characteristics of the state is also added the fact that no productive activities are found in Civitas Vaticana, in fact there is a public monopoly of economic activity. 2. Covid-19 crosses the Vatican walls The normal and daily contacts between Italy and Civitas Vaticana, on various institutional, work and religious occasions, have allowed the outbreak of the virus rapidly cross the Vatican walls, making the boundaries between the two state realities imperceptible precisely because of the nature of the enclave that characterizes the Vatican City, entirely surrounded by Italian territory. 2 C. CARDIA, Principi di diritto ecclesiastico. Tradizione europea legislazione italiana, IV ed., Torino, 2019, pp. 308-310. 2 VATICAN CITY STATE AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY|wwww.diresom.net – 27 APRILE 2020 RELIGION, LAW AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY The actual3 cases of infection, between Vatican citizens and employees of the Holy See, are eight. A small number if compared to the large and sad numbers of the various European states and the rest of the world. It appears even less if we consider the large flow of people who pass through the Vatican's daily access for work reasons. Think also of the pilgrims and tourists who visited - before the closing measures - St. Peter's Basilica or the Vatican Museums or the numerous Italians who go daily to the Vatican Pharmacy. Adding this the continuous flow of people in other "Vatican" properties, mostly located in the immediate vicinity of the Vatican State - in which many Dicasteries of the Roman Curia and connected to the Holy See. It is therefore evident "that contiguity of personal and legal relationships that connects both sides of the Tevere river, and that commonality of language, habits, lifestyle, which constitutes the substratum of all true familiarity. It follows, for example, that very few of those who cross the imaginary line that unites the two ends of Bernini's colonnade in St. Peter's Square psychologically warn that they are crossing the border between two states. [...] Too many links between the Vatican, the Roman reality, the Italian Church, ecclesiastical institutions and civil institutions, which end up favoring the dense network of contacts, exchanges of opinions and proposals, which make the two realities close and almost intimate, one to the other"4. The concerns arising from Covid-19 that animate the Vatican City State seem - at first sight - to be the same as those that are afflicting the other state realities of the world, all aimed at protecting the health and life of the affiliates. Whether it is the Holy See or ecclesiastical authorities at national and local level, 3 Holy See Press Office, Bollettino, Comunicato della Sala Stampa, 8th April 2020. 4 C. CARDIA, La condizione giuridica ex art. 16 Trattato del Laterano del Pontifico Seminario Lombardo (Parere pro rei veritate), in G. Dalla Torre- P. A. Bonnet (a cura di), Annali di diritto vaticano 2017, Città del Vaticano, 2017, pp. 14-15. 3 VATICAN CITY STATE AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY|wwww.diresom.net – 27 APRILE 2020 RELIGION, LAW AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY there is therefore the sharing - by the entire Catholic Church - of the just concerns of civil authorities towards “situations such as the one in which it is in play the good health and the good life of every single person, as well as the common good of the whole society”5. 3. Covid-19 and legislative / administrative measures in Vatican City State The Pope's state has been able to react to the Covid-19 emergency with promptness and determination, adopting numerous measures in coordination with those launched by the Italian authorities6. It should be stressed that these are measures which are sometimes of a regulatory nature, sometimes of an administrative nature. As for the former, think of the Rescriptum ex audientia Sanctissimi, and its annex, with which some extraordinary and urgent measures have been issued to counter the epidemiological emergency from Covid-19 and contain the negative effects on the conduct of judicial activity. The suspension of all procedural activities in progress at the judicial offices of the SCV was therefore ordered, as well as the related limitation and forfeiture terms, then providing for exceptions with regard to the internal investigative activity and more generally prior to the hearing and with regard to those procedures that need to be treated for urgent 5 G. DALLA TORRE, Gli ordini dati dello Stato e l’ordine interno della Chiesa, in Avvenire, 22nd March 2020, p. 3 6 On italian measures, and their influence on the “religious behavior and old-centuries rules that have resisted many other plagues”, see P. CONSORTI, Religions and virus, in Diresom Papers (www.diresomem.net – 9th March 2020). On the “new emergency rights” see L. M. GUZZO, Law and Religion during (and after) Covid-19 Emergency: the law is made for man not man for law, in Diresom Papers (www.diresomem.net – 30th March 2020). 4 VATICAN CITY STATE AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY|wwww.diresom.net – 27 APRILE 2020 RELIGION, LAW AND COVID-19 EMERGENCY reasons7. This is basically a regulatory provision adopted directly by the Holy Father as monarch of the state, and therefore not by the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State which usually exercises the legislative power which the Pontiff is in any case owner of. The measures adopted of an administrative nature, think of the provisions that already on February 25 the Health and Hygiene Directorate of the Governorate of the Vatican City State sent electronically for the prevention and spread of the Covid-19 infection, to be poste in the places of work and at the entrance of services open to the public. Or to the provisions of the same Health and Hygiene Department which have re-proposed those prudential containment measures adopted by most States8. It should be noted how similar provisions were adopted through administrative measures by one of the Departments that make up the Governorate of the Vatican City State and therefore not by resorting to those provisions having the force of law that the President of the Pontifical Commission for the State Vatican City has the power to enact in cases of necessity and urgency. By extending the radius of action to the entire Roman Curia and to the entities connected to the Holy See9, the first section of the Secretariat of State has released some special rules to be observed by proposing even more drastic rules of prudence for Civitas Vaticana and for extra-territorial10 buildings, considering the extent of the infection11. 7 Segreteria di Stato, Rescriptum ex audientia Sanctissimi, 18th March 2020, in L’Osservatore Romano, 20th -21st March 2020, p. 7. (Suspension until 3rd April 2020, later prolonged to 4th May 2020 by a new Rescriptum (1st April 2020, in L’Osservatore Romano, 3rd April 2020, p. 8). 8 Stato della Città del Vaticano, Governatorato, Direzione di Sanità ed Igiene, Norme per il contenimento dell’infezione da Covid-19, 6th March 2020. 9 See J. I. ARRIETA, Le istituzioni collegate con la Santa Sede, in G. Dalla Torre- P. A. Bonnet (a cura di), Annali di diritto vaticano 2016, Città del Vaticano, 2016, pp.