Wendover’s Vatican Story Confuses a Church, a State and a Diplomatic Victory

Wendover Productions has a genuinely fascinating story: how a religious institution with almost no conventional hard power can maintain diplomatic relationships across the world and influence international negotiations.

But How the Vatican's Embassies Work repeatedly manufactures a paradox by confusing legal identities, overstating institutional deficiencies and attributing diplomatic outcomes to the Vatican without adequately examining what actually happened.

The Vatican does have an unusual population, an unusual economy and an unusual constitutional structure. It does not, however, have no population, no independent judiciary or no economic institutions. And the Holy See's diplomatic achievements deserve better historical accounting than a story that turns assistance into authorship.

These are not minor technical corrections. They change the explanation.

The Holy See and Vatican City are not the same institution

The video's most consequential problem is its treatment of the Holy See and Vatican City as interchangeable.

At one point, the narrator declares:

"there's zero distinction between the state and the church"

That is an extraordinarily imprecise description of the very arrangement the episode is supposed to explain.

There are two distinct international legal entities:

• The Holy See is the central governing authority of the worldwide Catholic Church. It possesses its own international legal personality and conducts diplomatic relations.
• Vatican City State is the small territorial state established in 1929 to guarantee the Holy See's independence.

The distinction is explicit in the Lateran Treaty.

Article 2 recognizes the international sovereignty of the Holy See. Article 3 establishes Vatican City and recognizes the Holy See's exclusive sovereignty over its territory.

Article 12 separately recognizes the Holy See's right to send and receive diplomatic representatives.

The Vatican's own official explanation of its institutional structure explicitly identifies both as distinct sovereign subjects of international public law.

They are connected through the pope, but they are not interchangeable.

This distinction explains the diplomatic system. Apostolic nunciatures represent the Holy See, not simply the government of Vatican City.

The video actually acknowledges this when discussing the nunciatures, then undermines its own explanation by declaring that church and state are literally the same thing.

The distinction also matters when discussing recognition. The Holy See's diplomatic personality did not suddenly appear in 1929 because Italy handed over territory. It maintained diplomatic relations during the period from 1870 to 1929, when Vatican City State did not exist.

The real story is the survival of an established international diplomatic institution through the loss of its territorial state.

That is considerably more interesting than suggesting that the world collectively decided to treat an ordinary church as a country.

Vatican City has a population and a judicial system

The narrator describes Vatican City as having no real permanent population, explaining that its citizens are not born there and generally retain their original national identities.

There is a legitimate legal question here. Vatican citizenship is unusual, and its population is closely connected to employment and institutional responsibilities.

But the absence of hereditary citizenship is not the absence of a population.

The Vatican's own population statistics recorded 882 residents at the end of 2024, including 673 citizens. Of those citizens, 458 lived inside the walls.

Its December 2024 report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change describes a population of fewer than 1,000 people, residing permanently because of authorized offices or employment.

Citizenship can also extend to qualifying family members.

This is not a conventional national population. But the distinction matters.

The frequently cited Montevideo Convention's definition of statehood requires a permanent population. It does not require a population with hereditary nationality, a shared ethnic identity or a population whose members were born inside the territory.

A 2015 European Journal of International Law analysis does identify the transient nature of Vatican residents as a genuine complication for conventional statehood criteria. It also cautions that those criteria are not a definitive legal mechanism for determining whether an entity is a state.

That is the debate the episode should have explained.

Instead, it turns the absence of birthright citizenship into evidence that virtually nobody is from the country.

The legal system claim is even more problematic.

The narrator says:

"it doesn't have an independent legal system"

This is factually misleading.

Vatican City has its own judicial institutions, including a Tribunal, Court of Appeal and Court of Cassation. It has civil and criminal procedural codes and its own legislation.

The Vatican's official judicial description identifies these institutions and their responsibilities.

There is an important qualification: the pope appoints judges and retains extraordinary authority over judicial proceedings. Vatican judicial independence is therefore not equivalent to the separation of powers found in many democratic constitutions.

But that is not the same as having no independent judicial system.

The relationship with Italy is also more precise than the video suggests.

Under the Vatican's legal framework, Italian legislation applies supplementarily where Vatican law does not provide a rule, subject to approval by the competent Vatican authority. This is stated explicitly in the Institute for the Works of Religion's regulatory explanation.

Articles 22 and 23 of the Lateran Treaty provide for Italian assistance in prosecuting certain crimes committed within Vatican territory and recognize the execution of judgments issued by Vatican courts in Italy.

Cooperation between two judicial systems does not mean one of them does not exist.

The video takes an unusual arrangement and presents it as an institutional absence.

The Vatican's economy is small, not nonexistent

The episode describes museum ticket sales as Vatican City's principal economic activity and concludes that it has no real economy.

Museum admissions are important. But the financial picture is considerably more complicated.

The Vatican City State's Directorate for the Economy is responsible for state accounting, asset management, financial statements, treasury activities and commercial operations.

Its economic activities explicitly include commercial management, postage stamp and coin sales, and parking.

More importantly, the financial operations of Vatican City State must be distinguished from those of the Holy See.

The Holy See has a much wider financial structure, supported by donations, investments, museum revenues and property holdings.

An Associated Press investigation published in June 2025 documented a property portfolio of approximately 5,449 properties across Italy and international locations, including London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne.

Only around one-fifth were rented at market rates. The portfolio generated approximately €35 million in profit in 2023.

The same investigation reported that the Holy See's projected consolidated budget for 2022 was €770 million, with substantial spending on diplomatic missions and Vatican media operations.

These figures do not represent Vatican City's municipal economy. They belong to the wider financial institutions of the Holy See.

That distinction is precisely what the episode needs to maintain.

There is another important omission in the history of Vatican independence.

The 1929 Lateran settlement was not simply a territorial transfer. Its accompanying Financial Convention required Italy to pay the Holy See 750 million Italian lire in cash and deliver Italian government bonds with a nominal value of another one billion lire.

The payment settled the financial claims arising from the loss of the Papal States in 1870.

The original financial agreement, published by the Vatican, records these amounts explicitly.

This matters because the Holy See's international operations have never depended exclusively on museum tickets.

The institution has a global financial structure, property holdings, investment income and an international fundraising network.

It is not an ordinary national economy. It is also not economically empty.

The United Nations did not introduce a binding ban on human cloning

The video's cloning example is one of its strongest stories about Vatican influence.

The Holy See opposed reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning, arguing that the latter also violated human dignity because it involved the destruction of human embryos.

Its diplomats advocated a broader prohibition, while other countries favoured restricting only reproductive cloning.

The narrator then describes the 2005 outcome as:

"a ban on human cloning far wider reaching than that initially introduced in 01"

That description overstates what the United Nations actually adopted.

On March 8, 2005, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 59/280, containing the United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning.

The recorded vote was 84 in favour, 34 against and 37 abstentions.

But this was a non-binding declaration, not an international treaty imposing a legally enforceable prohibition.

Its language called upon member states to prohibit forms of human cloning insofar as they were incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.

The distinction is substantial.

A declaration asking governments to adopt national legislation is not the same as an international legal prohibition binding every member state.

The United Nations' own historical record documents the negotiations and the final vote. A 2005 Congressional Research Service report explicitly describes the resolution as non-binding.

The episode also gives insufficient attention to the political divisions behind the outcome.

In November 2003, Iran, acting on behalf of the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, introduced a motion to postpone the cloning debate until September 2005.

It passed by just one vote: 80 to 79.

The eventual 2005 declaration was the product of several years of disagreement among governments over reproductive cloning, therapeutic research and the legal form of an international response.

The Holy See had influence in that debate. It did not have a vote.

Its moral lobbying may have helped shape the eventual language, but the voting record does not establish that the Vatican single-handedly produced the outcome.

Calling this a Vatican victory overstates the evidence. Calling it a binding international ban is simply incorrect.

The Vatican helped the Cuban thaw, but did not create it

The 2014 rapprochement between the United States and Cuba is the episode's most compelling example of Vatican diplomacy.

Pope Francis wrote to Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, encouraged compromise and provided a diplomatic venue for discussions.

The White House explicitly acknowledged the Vatican's importance.

But the official American account contains details that substantially change the scale of the story.

Exploratory discussions between the United States and Cuba began in spring 2013, more than a year before the Vatican's direct involvement.

The first face-to-face negotiations took place in Canada in June 2013. Canada hosted the majority of meetings between June 2013 and November 2014.

The Vatican subsequently hosted an important final meeting, where senior officials received both delegations and helped finalize commitments.

The White House described the pope's personal appeal as providing additional impetus and momentum.

This was meaningful diplomatic involvement. It was not the Vatican independently negotiating the entire agreement.

The December 17, 2014 White House briefing provides the chronology directly.

It also identifies another important distinction: Alan Gross was not part of the prisoner exchange.

Three Cuban intelligence agents held in the United States were exchanged for an American intelligence asset. Gross was released separately on humanitarian grounds.

The episode compresses these developments into a single diplomatic success story.

There is also a straightforward factual error in its chronology.

The video says the Cuban embassy reopened on December 17, 2014.

That was the date Obama and Castro announced their decision to restore diplomatic relations. The embassies actually reopened on July 20, 2015.

The US State Department's official history confirms the date.

A seven-month difference is not a subtle interpretation of history. It is a mistake.

The 2025 prisoner release was more complicated

The episode also credits Vatican diplomacy with helping secure the release of approximately 500 Cuban prisoners in early 2025.

This part has genuine supporting evidence.

Cardinal Seán O'Malley publicly stated on January 14, 2025, that he had carried messages from Pope Francis to the American and Cuban presidents over several years, seeking prisoner releases and improved relations.

Cuba announced the release of 553 prisoners in response to the pope's appeal.

But the agreement was also tied to American policy concessions.

Joe Biden announced that the United States would remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism as part of the arrangement.

Donald Trump reversed that decision upon taking office, and Cuba temporarily paused the prisoner-release process.

Reuters subsequently reported on March 11 that all 553 releases had been completed, while noting that the Cuban government had not established how many were political prisoners and that rights groups questioned the status of some releases.

The Vatican's role was real. The outcome, however, depended on political bargaining between governments and remained vulnerable to changes in American policy.

This is not simply a story about a pope persuading two countries to do the right thing.

It is a story about diplomatic mediation, American concessions, Cuban decisions and a fragile agreement that survived a change of administration.

The sponsor is not the problem

The transcript includes a disclosed sponsorship from Brilliant, promoting its educational courses.

I found no evidence connecting that sponsorship to the video's treatment of Vatican sovereignty or diplomacy. There is no defensible basis for alleging that the sponsor influenced the editorial argument.

The substantive problems are in the reporting and framing themselves.

The real Vatican story is more interesting than this one

The Holy See's diplomatic influence is extraordinary. Its international relationships, network of apostolic nunciatures and ability to act as a relatively neutral intermediary give it access that few institutions can replicate.

But the explanation should begin with the actual legal arrangement.

Vatican City is a deliberately tiny territorial state, created to guarantee the independence of an older international religious authority. Its population is small and institutionally defined. It has its own courts and laws, although its judicial structure is unusual and Italy provides important supplementary services.

The Holy See conducts the diplomacy. Vatican City provides the territorial guarantee. The pope connects the two.

The cloning declaration was non-binding, and the Cuban thaw involved negotiations that began well before Vatican mediation.

Wendover has mistaken several different things for the same thing: a lack of conventional national identity for a lack of population, legal cooperation for an absence of courts, limited economic diversification for an absence of economic institutions, and diplomatic assistance for decisive political authorship.

The Vatican does not need these exaggerations to be fascinating.

Its actual institutional arrangement is sufficiently unusual, and its diplomatic influence sufficiently consequential, to stand on its own.

An educational documentary should make that arrangement clearer. This one sometimes makes it harder to understand.

The central story survives. The explanation does not.

References

1. How the Vatican's Embassies Work — Wendover Productions, February 27, 2025. Original video. The primary work under review, including its historical claims, diplomatic examples and Brilliant sponsorship.

2. Treaty Between the Holy See and Italy (Lateran Treaty) — Holy See/Vatican City State, February 11, 1929. Official treaty. Articles 2, 3 and 12 establish the distinction between territorial sovereignty and the Holy See's diplomatic personality.

3. Patti Lateranensi — Secretariat of State, Holy See, February 11, 1929. Original treaty and financial convention. Documents the 750 million lire payment and one billion lire in government bonds.

4. Population — Governorate of Vatican City State, statistics updated December 31, 2024. Official population figures. Establishes the actual number of residents and citizens.

5. Vatican City State's First Biennial Transparency Report — Vatican City State, submitted to UNFCCC, December 2024. Full report. Describes the population's permanent residence arrangements and the state's institutional structure.

6. Judicial Function — Governorate of Vatican City State. Official judicial description. Identifies the Vatican's own courts and judicial responsibilities.

7. Regulatory Framework — Institute for the Works of Religion. Official legal framework. Explains that Italian law is supplementary to Vatican legislation rather than a replacement for it.

8. Directorate for the Economy — Governorate of Vatican City State. Official responsibilities. Documents state accounting, asset management, commercial activities, coin and stamp sales, and parking operations.

9. How the Vatican manages money and where Pope Leo XIV might find more — Associated Press, Nicole Winfield, June 7, 2025. AP investigation. Provides figures on Holy See finances, donations, investment income and international property holdings.

10. International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex — European Journal of International Law, 2015. Academic analysis. Explains why the Holy See's legal personality and Vatican City's statehood do not fit neatly into conventional statehood categories.

11. Convention on Rights and Duties of States — United States Department of State, December 26, 1933. Montevideo Convention. Sets out the commonly cited statehood criteria and the principle that political existence is independent of recognition.

12. Ad Hoc Committee on an International Convention against the Reproductive Cloning of Human Beings — United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, historical record updated January 28, 2016. UN proceedings. Records the 2003 postponement vote and the 2005 declaration's adoption.

13. Human Cloning — Congressional Research Service, Judith A. Johnson and Erin D. Williams, May 20, 2005. Congressional research report. Establishes that the UN declaration was non-binding rather than an enforceable international treaty.

14. Background Conference Call on Policy Changes in Cuba and the Release of Alan Gross — White House, December 17, 2014. Official briefing transcript. Establishes the 2013 start of negotiations, Canada's role, the Vatican's involvement and the separate treatment of Alan Gross.

15. Cuba — Diplomatic Relations — US Department of State, Office of the Historian. Official diplomatic chronology. Confirms that diplomatic relations and embassy status resumed on July 20, 2015.

16. Statement on U.S.-Cuba Relations — Cardinal Seán O'Malley, January 14, 2025. Cardinal's statement. Provides direct confirmation of his role carrying papal messages and the announcement concerning 553 prisoners.

17. Cuba concludes release of 553 prisoners following Vatican-brokered deal — Reuters, Dave Sherwood and Nelson Acosta, March 11, 2025. Reuters investigation. Documents the Biden-Trump reversal, interruption of the release process and uncertainty surrounding the prisoners' political status.