Digital News Report-Vatican City, the world’s smallest sovereign state and home to the Pope, has decided to no longer automatically adopt laws passed by the Italian parliament. Vatican City came into existence in 1929 as a walled enclave within the city of Rome. According to Vatican legal experts, there are too many laws in Italian civil and criminal codes that conflict with the Catholic Church’s principles and each one should be looked at individually before being adopted.
The Vatican has also decided to examine international treaties more closely before adhering to them. This comes after a United Nations declaration that has sought to decriminalize homosexuality. Archbishop Celestino Migliore said that the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination,” and could lead to gay marriage.
The separation from Italian government went into effect on January 1st. Prior to that, if the Italian government had adopted the UN resolution, the Vatican would have been forced to comply by it as well. Though the Vatican has openly stated that they are in favor of decriminalizing homosexuality, they feel that the UN resolution has gone “too far.”
According to the BBC, an Italian government minister has said that Italian laws are often badly written and are sometimes difficult to understand. At this time a parliamentary commission is in the midst of deleting tens of thousands of obsolete laws from Italy’s civil code. This was also a contributing factor for the Vatican’s separation from the Italian government.