How is the rightful autonomy of the Papacy ensured?
In order to ensure that the office of the Papacy is completely free and uninhibited in the fulfillment of its universal mission the Pope is entitled to both spiritual and temporal sovereignty including the right to a civil principate. In former times this right was made manifest in the form of the Papal States. Pope Pius XI comments on the modern realization of this right that has taken the form of the current Vatican City State – a solution that he considers well adapted to the circumstances and needs of our time: “People do not sufficiently reflect perhaps on how troublesome and dangerous it would be—We speak of the situation today—to unite the civil administration of a population, no matter how small, to the universal government of the Church. The smallness of the territory guarantees Us against all inconvenience of this kind…So then, a minimum of territory, enough for the exercise of sovereignty; the needful territory without which it could not subsist because it would have nothing
