MONICA GORDON

The Catholic Church is the only religion that holds statehood — namely, the Vatican City State. Given that the power attached to this position is often misused and unnecessary for a religion to function at all, the Vatican’s statehood should be revoked.

Vatican City State is the smallest nation on the planet — a country of approximately 800 employees of the Catholic Church, covering an area of 0.44 square kilometers. Statehood comes with some pretty big perks: the Vatican has a seat at the United Nations as a permanent observer and neither it nor its head of state can be sued or face criminal charges. Unfortunately, in the past, the Vatican has used these privileges to impose its religious dogmas on others and protect itself from scrutiny.

The Vatican has taken full advantage of its UN seat. At the Cairo Conference on Population and Development, they successfully blocked family planning initiatives that would have provided access to contraception, abortion and sterilization in developing countries. This has a huge effect on women who want to escape poverty. Instead, they are giving birth to more children than they can afford because they don’t have access to contraception. Some of these women — desperate from watching their children starve — are also dying from unsafe abortions.

Collaborating with Libya and Iraq, the Vatican has fought the implementation of any humanitarian aid that would condone LGBTQI lifestyles or distribute condoms, even in areas affected by HIV and AIDS. At the 57th annual UN Commission on the Status of Women, the Vatican opposed measures that would have provided abortion services for victims of rape and assistance for women suffering from domestic violence in relationships other than marriage.

During the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, the Vatican pulled funding when the UN began distributing emergency contraception to the hundreds of women who had been victims of systematic rape. Imagine being traumatized through sexual assault and then when you try to get emergency contraception to avoid pregnancy, the humanitarian worker tells you that there’s none left and they can’t afford more. These hypotheticals for us have been past realities for countless women.

All of these actions are somewhat understandable given the religious values of the Catholic Church. It makes sense that they don’t want to encourage sexual relationships outside of marriage, but it’s a problem when promoting the values is done in a manner that leaves women vulnerable to abusers. These situations are complicated and actions on an international scale can have serious consequences for marginalized individuals.

The other perk of statehood — immunity to civil and criminal charges — shouldn’t be forgotten. Most are familiar with the Catholic Church’s history of pedophilic priests; a situation that was managed deplorably. Accused priests were quietly relocated, with their new parishes left unaware of the predator in their midst. With reputation prioritized over helping the vulnerable, the sexual abuse of children was handled as an internal matter, out of the public’s eye.

The Catholic Church has no mandatory crime reporting policy, meaning that unless there are federal laws that demand it, priests are not obligated to report crimes to local authorities. The former pope, Benedict XVI — having held the position of head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office — would have had thousands of reports of child abuse cross his desk, according to some victims’ advocacy groups. These same groups have argued that, since Benedict didn’t inform police or even warn families about a single one of these predators, he effectively covered up the abuse.

Vatican statehood means that nobody outside the state knows for sure exactly what the Catholic Church is doing and we can’t hold anyone responsible. While the UN has urged the Vatican in the past to properly handle the sexual abuse cases and give them access to internal records, they can’t force the Vatican to do anything.

If the Vatican were to lose statehood — and by extension a seat at the UN — its ability to negatively affect lives would be greatly reduced.

Furthermore, imagine if the Vatican were annexed into Italy. With statehood revoked, the Italian government could force the Vatican to turn over its records, make them employ transparency in their administrative practices and bring charges against anyone who participated in a cover-up — even the former pope.

Statehood is not a requirement for conducting religious practices. Every other religion is proof of that. While you might not think it from the actions described above, Catholicism does have some very redeemable ideals, such as concern for those less fortunate and love for one’s neighbor. Maybe demoting the Vatican could bring out the best in it.