The Lateran Treaty and Church-State Relations in Italy

The 1929 Lateran Treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See resolved the Roman Question, decades of unresolved dispute following the Papal States' loss during unification, by recognizing Vatican City as a sovereign state and granting the Catholic Church various privileges within Italy, including recognition of Catholic religious marriage and compulsory Catholic religious education in public schools; a 1984 revised concordat under Prime Minister Bettino Craxi ended Catholicism's status as Italy's official state religion, made religious education optional, and redirected state funding to religious bodies through an annual taxpayer-designated contribution scheme, the otto per mille, that Italians can also direct to other recognized religions or secular welfare causes. Italy has since extended formal understandings, called intese, to a growing list of other religious communities, including Jewish, Protestant and Buddhist bodies, though Islam, Italy's second largest religion by adherents given large-scale immigration since the late twentieth century, has never secured a formal intesa, leaving mosque construction and Muslim religious practice more dependent on local and regional regulation than the more secure legal footing enjoyed by intesa-holding faiths.