The Italian signature on the pacts was Mussolini's, and the circumstances have been argued about ever since. The fascist government wanted the prestige of settling a question that had defeated liberal Italy for two generations, and wanted Catholic acquiescence in its consolidation of power. The Holy See wanted the guarantees the concordat offered for Catholic institutions and education, and a resolution of an anomaly that had become untenable.
Assessments differ sharply among historians. Some read the agreement as a hard-headed bargain that secured the church's institutional position and its independence, and note that the relationship deteriorated within two years, with a papal encyclical of 1931 protesting against the suppression of Catholic Action and asserting the church's right to educate. Others hold that the pacts conferred substantial legitimacy on the regime at a critical moment, and that the political neutrality the church accepted in Italy had costs that were paid later.
The concordat outlasted the regime that signed it. It was revised by agreement in 1984, ending Catholicism's status as the sole religion of the Italian state and altering the arrangements for religious education and church funding, while leaving the sovereignty of Vatican City untouched.
The atlas records the settlement and names the dispute about its politics rather than resolving it, because the historians who work on the period have not resolved it either.