Father James Martin: ‘The Vatican Is Not a Walled City’

ROME — Jesuit Father James Martin has struck back at the “internet,” launching the disingenuous and counter-factual claim the Vatican “is not a walled city.”

Father Martin, a gay rights activist, was responding to critics who have pointed out the obvious irony involved in Pope Francis’ harsh criticisms against U.S. immigration policy while the Vatican itself is the only walled sovereign territory in the world.

The massive, 40-foot-high walls surrounding Vatican City State were built by Pope Leo IV, after Islamic Saracen troops sacked Old St. Peter’s Basilica in 846 AD.

The original wall encompassed the entire Vatican hill, surrounding what came to be known as the Leonine City, but was later reduced to circumscribe the 110-acre Vatican City that exists today.

The current walls span a full 2 miles in length, completely surrounding the territory. Saint Peter’s Square and Basilica are technically on Vatican territory and are open to the public but moving beyond the square or the basilica into the interior of the Vatican involves passing check points manned by armed Swiss Guards.

The extent of the Vatican walls can be grasped from this accurate visual from WorldAtlas.com:

Father Martin’s ill-advised foray into Vatican topography sought to counter a barrage of criticism aimed at the pope’s equally ill-advised letter to the American bishops on the question of U.S. immigration policy and Vice President J.D. Vance’s defense of it using the Catholic principle of ordo amoris (the order of love).

In that letter, the pontiff stated that any rightly formed conscience can see the error of identifying “the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”

Yet while the pope was insisting that it is not a crime to cross the U.S. border illegally, the Vatican itself has been tightening its own border policy, promising harsh sanctions — both fines and incarceration — to anyone who enters its territory illegally.

The pope went on to refute arguments recently employed by J.D. Vance to explain U.S. immigration policy, and specifically the duty of governments to prioritize the good of their own citizens before that of the rest of the world, under the concept of ordo amoris.

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” the pope declared. “In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings!”

File/Roadworks, managed by the Municipality of Rome and started in May, for the Jubilee 2025 near the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Vatican wall. The city has become very chaotic due to roadworks that were started and never finished. Rome (Italy), October 29th, 2024  (Grzegorz Galazka/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” he stated.

What the pope intended to say with this word salad is not altogether clear, but his attempt to call out J.D. Vance for his interpretation of ordo amoris led some to wonder aloud why Francis would selectively chide a Catholic like Vance while failing to correct Joe Biden for far more egregious departures from Church teaching.

Writing for the The Pillar Catholic, journalist Ed Condon noted that in the light of this letter, “many may be wondering where the pope has been for the last four years.”

Despite President Joe Biden explicitly touting his Catholicism as inspiration for his policy platforms, “no papal corrective came for his full-throated defense of and federal funding for abortion,” Condon observed.

Francis’ intervention is almost certain to be interpreted as “a sign of partisanship, that only Catholic politicians of certain stripes, be it called ‘right-wing,’ ‘conservative,’ ‘MAGA’ or anything else, merit ecclesiastical rebuke,” he added.

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