Another change (and not a minor one): Leo XIV completely replaces Pope Francis’s Vatican law

(ZENIT News / Rome, 08.08.2026).- Pope Leo XIV has done something unusual for the Vatican: only three years after Pope Francis substantially rewrote the constitutional framework of the Vatican City State, he has replaced it again.

The new Fundamental Law, promulgated on July 31, 2026, entered into force immediately, without the customary period between promulgation and implementation. It is the fourth constitutional text in the history of the modern Vatican state, following the law promulgated by Pius XI in 1929 after the Lateran Pacts, the revision approved by John Paul II in 2000 and Francis’ constitution of 2023.

The speed of the change is itself revealing. Seventy-one years separated the first two constitutions; twenty-three years separated the second and third. Leo XIV has now replaced Francis’ text barely three years after its promulgation.

Yet this is not a constitutional revolution.

Most of the 2023 framework survives. The five-part structure governing the legislative, executive and judicial functions remains in place, as do the Pontifical Commission as legislative body and the Governorate as the executive structure serving the Pope and directly accountable to him. Much of the previous wording, including provisions concerning the budget, flag and coat of arms, has been retained.

The significance of Leo’s intervention lies elsewhere: in a handful of precise corrections, and particularly in a change to how the Vatican understands the source of the Pope’s temporal authority.

The phrase that disappeared

The most consequential alteration concerns the idea that the Pope governs Vatican City “by virtue of the Petrine office.”

Francis’ 2023 Fundamental Law explicitly connected the Pope’s sovereignty over the state to his office as successor of Saint Peter. The new constitution removes that formulation.

This was an unprecedented historical and ecclesiological formulation. The expression was unnecessary and historically imprecise.

The distinction may appear highly technical to anyone unfamiliar with the history of the papacy. It is not.

The Pope possesses spiritual authority in the Church because of his office as successor of Peter. The territorial sovereignty of the modern Vatican City State, however, has a different historical origin. It was established through the Lateran Treaty of 1929 as a sovereign territory designed to guarantee the Holy See’s independence and its freedom to exercise its international mission.

That distinction is precisely what Leo’s new text restores.

The Pope remains sovereign of Vatican City and retains the fullness of legislative, executive and judicial power within the state. But the constitution no longer presents that temporal sovereignty as something directly inherited from Saint Peter.

In constitutional terms, Leo is separating two realities that are closely connected in the life of the Catholic Church but are not historically identical: the spiritual office of the Pope and the temporal instrument created to protect the independence of the Holy See.

That is a subtle change, but potentially the most intellectually important one in the entire reform.

From the Papal States to Vatican City

The historical background explains why. The temporal power of the popes did not originate with saint Peter. The Papal States developed centuries after the apostolic era, beginning in recognizable form around the eighth century and continuing, with interruptions, until the Italian capture of Rome in 1870. The collapse of papal territorial sovereignty produced the so-called Roman Question, which remained unresolved for almost six decades.

The Lateran Pacts of 1929 finally settled the dispute. Their treaty created the Vatican City State as a sovereign territory whose fundamental purpose was to secure the independence of the Holy See.

That is why Leo’s XIV constitutional adjustment is more than a stylistic preference. It restores the legal rationale of Vatican City to the circumstances that produced it.

The state exists not because Saint Peter once possessed temporal territory, but because the Holy See requires a sovereign territorial basis from which the successor of Peter can exercise his spiritual and international mission independently.

The distinction also helps prevent an easy but misleading interpretation of Vatican sovereignty as a form of theocracy in which spiritual and temporal authority are simply the same thing.

A practical correction with symbolic weight

Leo’s reform is not confined to constitutional philosophy. One of its most concrete effects is to consolidate the legal basis for the presidency of the Pontifical Commission, the body that exercises the legislative function of the Vatican City State.

Francis’ 2023 law said that the Commission was composed of cardinals, “including the President.” Yet in January 2025 Francis announced that Sister Raffaella Petrini would become president of the Commission and of the Governorate, making her the first woman to hold the position. She was not, of course, a cardinal.

The discrepancy was eventually addressed by Leo XIV in a November 2025 motu proprio, which changed the relevant provision so that the Commission could consist of cardinals and other members, “including the President.” The new Fundamental Law now incorporates that correction permanently.

The practical consequence is significant: the presidency is no longer legally tied to membership in the College of Cardinals. A religious, a woman religious or a layperson can occupy the position.

The reform therefore does not merely ratify Petrini’s position. It establishes a broader principle: governing the Vatican City State is a constitutional and administrative responsibility, not a sacramental office.

A state whose machinery is becoming more explicit

Several other amendments follow the same philosophy of clarification. The Pope can now delegate legislative authority to an organ other than the Pontifical Commission. The position of Vice Secretary General of the Governorate, previously mandatory, becomes optional. The Secretary General is given formal custody of the state seal, while the General Counselor can be invited to meetings of the Pontifical Commission in an advisory capacity.

The judicial architecture is also spelled out more clearly. Rather than referring generically to judicial bodies, the new law explicitly identifies the Tribunal, Court of Appeal, Court of Cassation and Office of the Promoter of Justice.

These may sound like bureaucratic details. In a sovereign state, however, constitutional precision matters precisely because it defines who can act, under what authority and within which institutional limits.

The new law therefore reads less like an attempt to redesign Vatican government than an effort to eliminate ambiguities exposed by recent experience.

That may ultimately prove to be Leo XIV’s constitutional signature.

He has not dismantled Francis’ institutional architecture. Instead, he has corrected points at which legal text and governmental practice had drifted apart, while simultaneously restoring a more historically grounded explanation of papal sovereignty.

The result is a Vatican constitution that is both conservative and corrective: conservative in its preservation of the fundamental structure, corrective in its insistence that the legal framework accurately describe the state that actually exists.

For Leo XIV, whose formation includes canon law, that approach is fitting. The reform’s message is not that the Vatican needs a new political identity. It is that the world’s smallest state must ensure that its legal identity, its historical foundations and its governmental practice do not contradict one another.

After the turbulence of recent years, that may be less dramatic than a constitutional revolution. It may also be more important.

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