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A prisoner in the Vatican is what Pope Pius IX called himself in 1870 when papal rule in Rome was ended by force, the Papal States joined the rest of Italy to form the newly united Kingdom of Italy under King Victor Emmanuel II and the city became the capital. Popes in their secular role gradually extended their control over neighbouring regions and through the Papal States ruled a large portion of the Italian peninsula for more than a thousand years until the mid 19th century, when most of the territory was seized by the Kingdom of Italy.
Popes initially refused to accept their loss of the Papal States and secular power. In an act of defiance, they refused to leave the Vatican, describing themselves melodramatically as the 'prisoner in the Vatican'.
Disputes between a series of "prisoner" popes and Italy were resolved on February 11, 1929 by three Lateran treaties, which established the independent state of the Vatican City.
History of Catholicism in Italy
History of the Papacy
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