The pope's government is older than the Vatican City microstate
The Holy See—Sancta Sedes—is the Catholic Church's central government and the juridical person behind Vatican diplomacy, distinct from the 1929 Vatican City State created by the Lateran Treaty with Italy. Tradition traces the see to Peter and Paul in the first century.
See comes from Latin sedes, seat, meaning the bishop's throne. Any see founded by an apostle can be called apostolic, but with the definite article the term means Rome, and only the pope's see may be styled holy, with one past exception: the electoral Archbishopric of Mainz in the Holy Roman Empire bore the title Holy See of Mainz. The Holy See is distinct from Vatican City, which the 1929 Lateran Treaty with Italy created to guarantee papal independence, and papal nuncios represent the former, not the latter.
Constantine's Edict of Milan in 313 recognised the Church's legal status and property, and Theodosius I made it the Roman state church in 380. The Donation of Constantine, long believed to hand Western political authority to the pope, was exposed as a forgery shortly before the Reformation. King Liutprand's Donation of Sutri in 728 gave the papacy land near Rome; the Papal States held territory and armies from 756 to 1870, and Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne in 800. The Congress of Vienna recognised the Holy See as a permanent subject of international law.
It is one of seven remaining absolute monarchies. The pope governs through the Curia: a Secretariat of State, the only Curial body inside Vatican City, headed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin as a kind of prime minister, with Archbishop Paul Gallagher handling relations with states; nineteen dicasteries; and three tribunals, among them the Roman Rota, which hears mostly marriage-nullity appeals, and the Apostolic Penitentiary, which grants absolutions and indulgences.
The See does not dissolve when a pope dies or resigns; most department heads lose office at once, though the Major Penitentiary carries on. It keeps diplomatic relations with 180 states. In 2001 its revenue was about 422 billion lire, some US$202 million.
Source: Holy See
