City-state. Like Britain and Japan, the Vatican has a geography, a population, a language, and a national anthem ("Inno Pon- tifico," Gounod). In some ways, its domestic problems are those of many a larger nation: Worldwide stagflation, for exam- ple, has drained the Vatican's exchequer. Domestic political and administrative reforms, long overdue, have not always worked out as planned. What set the Vatican apart, of course, are its tiny size and its religious mission. Here, theologian...