In October 1978 the college of cardinals of the Catholic church elected as pope Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Cracow. With that vote a non-Italian ascended the throne of Saint Peter for the first time since 1522. The outcome was a surprising and dramatic break with tradition. For centuries Italians had a presumed right to occupy the position. The curia, the church's governing body, was almost entirely Italian in tradition, membership, and language. And though Italians had recently lost their majority in the college of cardinals, they remained the largest bloc in it and failed to elect one of their own number on this occasion only because they could not agree on who it should be. Inevitably the election of a “foreign” pontiff was therefore a greater shock in Italy than anywhere else.

Under the circumstances the adjustment of the Italian people was remarkably quick and easy. But did the installation of a Polish pope herald a fundamental change in the traditional relations between the Vatican and the Italian state? There were many that autumn who said that the Tiber, separating the Holy See from the Eternal City, was sure to become wider than ever before. A foreign pope without personal ties to the country and its political leaders was bound, it was thought, to play much less a role in Italian affairs than his predecessors. The way might then be open for a harmonious separation of church and state for the first time since Constantine.