Lateran Treaty
The Lateran Treaty (; ) was one of the Lateran Pacts of 1929 or Lateran Accords, agreements made in 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, settling the "Roman Question". They are named after the Lateran Palace, where they were signed on 11 February 1929. The Italian parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929. It recognized Vatican City as an independent state, with the Italian government, at the time led by Benito Mussolini as prime minister, agreeing to give the Roman Catholic Church financial compensation for the loss of the Papal States. In 1947, the Lateran Treaty was recognized in the Constitution of Italy as regulating the relations between the state and the Catholic Church.
Legal status of the Holy See
A separate question is whether the Holy See was a subject of international law between 1870, when the Kingdom of Italy annexed the Papal States, and 1929, when the Lateran Treaties were signed. The United States, for instance, suspended diplomatic relations with the Holy See when it lost the Papal States. Similarly, Oppenheim believed that the legal personality of the Papal States became extinct in 1870. For him, between 1870 and 1929, the "Holy See was not an international person," although "it had by custom and tacit consent of most states acquired a quasi-international position". The United Nations International Law Commission noted, nonetheless, that: