A treaty recognising the independence and sovereignty of the Holy See and creating the State of the Vatican City.
A concordat defining the civil and religious relations between the government and the church within Italy (summarised in the motto: "free church in free State").
A financial convention providing the Holy See with compensation for its losses in 1870.
Through the concordat, the Pope agreed to submit candidates for bishop and archbishop to the Italian government, to require bishops to swear allegiance to the Italian state before taking offices, and to forbid the clergy from taking part in politics. Italy agreed to submit its rules on marriage and divorce to make them conformable to the rules of the Roman Catholic Church, and to exempt clergy from military conscription. The treaties granted the Roman Catholic Church the status of the established church in Italy. They also gave the Roman Catholic Church substantial control over the Italian educational system.
The treaties were revised in 1984, primarily to remove the establishment of the Catholic Church in Italy.
The LateranPacts resolved "definitively and irrevocably the 'Roman Question', which had arisen in 1870 when Rome was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy" (Preamble to the Treaty).
Of course, the Lateran Treaty is and must remain intangible, but the two Sovereign Parties who signed it can of common accord explain and apply it in such a way as to make it comply with changed situations and sensibilities, as well as the unforeseen needs of the Holy See's mission.
This double anniversary, the 75th of the LateranPacts and the 20th of the modifying Accord, acquires further importance at this moment in history when Italy is involved with other countries in the process of European collaboration.
The Italian occupation forced Pope Pius IX to his palace where he declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican until the LateranPacts of 1929.
In 1929 Mussolini signed the LateranPacts with the Catholic Church (with whom Italy was in conflict since the annexation of Rome in 1870), leading to the formation of the tiny independent state of Vatican City.
He was initially in friendly terms with France and Britain, but the situation changed in 1935-36, when Italy invaded Ethiopia despite their opposition (Second Italo-Abyssinian War); because of this and of the ideological affinities with the Nazi party led by Hitler.
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