When Cavalier Benito Mussolini signed the Lateran Pacts with the Vatican in 1929, Pope Pius XI made a public speech and called him a "Man of Providence": "And perhaps we needed a man like the one whom providence has sent us: a man without the worries of the liberal school, for the men for whom all these laws, all these regulations, or rather these “disorderly regulations”, let’s say, all those laws, and all those regulations were just fetishes, like the fetishes that are just as intangible and venerated as they are ugly and deformed." 83 years have gone by and Rigor Montis, another man of Providence has been revealed to the world. He was educated by Jesuits, is a practising Catholic, and during his time in government has followed the rule of taking from the poor to give to the rich He’s has risen up among us. Instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh he is bringing gifts to the Vatican of IMU {local property tax} and private schools. The Vatican newspaper “Osservatore Romano” explained the Vatican’s enthusiasm thus: “To rise into politics is basically the expression of an appeal to recover the higher and more noble sense of politics that is always, even etymologically, to take care of the common good." The Osservatore Romano goes on "Napolitano... that everyone recognises to have made the right choice when he selected the life senator to be the one to draw Italy out of the financial tempest.“ A tempest that has seen the Vatican unscathed. An IMU (local property tax} is well worth a Mass. Cardinal Bagnasco lauded Rigor Montis "It’s not OK to go back on all the sacrifices of a year.". Obviously, he’s talking of the sacrifices made by the Italian people, in fact there don’t appear to have been sacrifices made by the Vatican. While Agnelli explained that Fiat was always governmental, the Vatican is something more, it makes itself the government of a foreign State. A distinction can be drawn between the Church and the Vatican. The former is the home of all Catholics, the latter is a State that acts in its own terrestrial interests. The Vatican cannot meddle in the affairs of the Republic of Italy, just as, for example, the Italian State must not influence the appointment of the next Pope or of the next Secretary of State. Cavour used the phrase "a free Church in a free State" to affirm the principle of the separation of the spiritual power of the Church from its temporal power, represented by the Savoy family. At that time he wasn’t thinking about Mussolini, the Vatican, Bagnasco, Bertone and Rigor Montis. Perhaps now’s the time to rethink the Lateran Pacts.