Vatican City may have fewer than 1,000 citizens and
spans only 110 acres, but it also has a multimillion-
dollar budget and an unbelievably complex history.
Understanding how it all works requires parsing
through centuries of religious texts. Is the Vatican
confusing and mysterious? Is the pope Catholic? A
look behind the scenes:

1. Regular exorcise!

Baudelaire once said that "the greatest trick the
devil ever pulled was convincing the world he
doesn't exist." But in modern-day Vatican City, the
devil is considered alive and well. The late Pope
John Paul II personally performed three exorcisms
during his reign, and Pope Benedict XVI expanded
the ranks of Catholic-sponsored exorcists
throughout the world. In fact, Father Gabriele
Amorth, the Church's chief exorcist, claims to expel
more than 300 demons a year from the confines of
his Vatican office, and there are some 350 exorcists
operating on behalf of the Catholic Church in Italy
alone. Amorth also teaches bishops how to tell the
difference between satanic possession and
psychiatric illness, noting that those who suffer
from the former seem to be particularly repulsed by
the sight of holy water and the cross.

2. Where thieves go to prey

With 1.5 crimes per citizen, Vatican City has the
highest crime rate in the world.
It's not that the cardinals are donning masks and
repeatedly robbing the bank, it's just that the
massive crowds of tourists make Vatican City a
pickpocket's paradise. The situation is complicated
by the fact that the Vatican has no working prison
and only one judge. So most criminals are simply
marched across the border into Italy, as part of a
pact between the two countries. (The Vatican's
legal code is based on Italy's, with some
modifications regarding abortion and divorce.)
Crimes that the Vatican sees fit to try itself —
mainly shoplifting in its duty-free stores — are
usually punished by temporarily revoking the
troublemaker's access to those areas. But not every
crime involves theft. In 2007, the Vatican issued its
first drug conviction after an employee was found
with a few ounces of cocaine in his desk.

3. The worst confessions

Some sins are simply too much for a local bishop to
forgive. While priests can absolve a sin as serious
as murder (according to the Church), there are five
specific sins that require absolution from the
Apostolic Penitentiary. This secretive tribunal has
met off and on for the past 830 years, but in
January 2009, for the first time ever, its members
held a press conference to discuss their work.
Three of the five sins they contemplate can only be
committed by the clergy. If you're a priest who
breaks the seal of confession, a priest who offers
confession to his own sexual partners, or a man
who has directly participated in an abortion and
wants to become a priest, then your case must go
before the tribunal to receive absolution. The other
two sins can be committed by anyone. The first,
desecrating the Eucharist, is particularly bad
because Catholics believe that the bread and wine
transubstantiate into the body and blood of Christ.
Messing with them is like messing with Jesus. And
then, there's the sin of attempting to assassinate
the pope. That one's pretty self-explanatory.
The meetings of the Apostolic Penitentiary are kept
confidential because they're a different form of
confession. The sinner is referred to by a
pseudonym, and only the Major Penitentiary,
Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro, decides how
the sin shall be dealt with. Presumably, a bunch of
Hail Marys doesn't cut it.

4. You can read the Pope's mail

The Vatican's secret archives haven't been truly
secret since Pope Leo XIII first allowed scholars to
visit in 1881. Today, it's even more accessible.
Outsiders are free to examine the correspondences
of every pope for the past 1,000 years, although
there is one catch: Guests have to know exactly
what they're looking for. With 52 miles of shelves in
the archives, the librarians prohibit browsing.
The most famous existing letter is probably Henry
VIII's request that his marriage to Catherine of
Aragon be annulled, which Pope Clement VII
denied. Henry divorced Catherine anyway and
married Anne Boleyn (and four other women),
leading to Rome's break with the Church of
England. The archives also contain an abundance of
red ribbons, which were used to bind 85 petitions
from English clergyman and aristocrats.

5. The Pope liked to text message

During his tenure, Pope Benedict XVI routinely sent
text messages of his homilies to mobile subscribers
around the world, and in 2009, the Vatican opened
up an official YouTube channel to show various
papal addresses and ceremonies. The Vatican even
released an iPhone application that contains
multilingual versions of the Breviary prayer book
and the prayers of daily mass. Most recently,
Benedict had joined Twitter in December, two
months before his resignation. The Vatican's
enthusiasm for technology isn't limited to cell
phones and the internet. It has also added solar
panels to the roof of the Pope Paul VI auditorium as
part of its commitment to fight climate change.

6. The Vatican has the finest Swiss bodyguards

Nowadays, the Swiss have a reputation for
pacifism, but back in the 1500s, they were
considered an unstoppable military force. Swiss
armies were renowned for the their mastery of a
weapon called the halberd, a deadly combination of
a spear and an axe, and their ground troops were
famous for routinely demolishing legions of
enemies on horseback. After Pope Julius II
witnessed their ferocity in battle 500 years ago, he
recruited a few soldiers to become his personal
bodyguards. Ever since, Swiss Guards have pledged
fidelity to the pope, sometimes dying for the cause.
During the sacking of Rome in 1527, for instance,
three quarters of them were killed while providing
cover for Pope Clement VII to escape.
Today, the hundred or so members of the Swiss
Guard spend most of their time bedecked in
Renaissance garb, twirling their halberds in
ceremonies or manning checkpoints around the
Vatican. When the Guards are actually protecting
the pope, they wear plain clothes and carry
distinctly modern weapons.

7. The Mafia dipped into the collection plate

In The Godfather: Part III, a shady deal between the
Mafia and the Vatican leads to the murder of the
pope. Was this based on a true story? Possibly. On
the morning of September 29, 1978, Pope John Paul
I was found dead, sitting up in his bed, after only 33
days in office. Although Vatican officials claimed the
65-year-old pope died of a heart attack, there was
never an autopsy, and at the time, the Vatican
definitely had ties to organized crime. Sure enough,
in 1982, Vatican Bank president Father Paul
Marcinkus resigned from his post after a series of
scandals exposed the bank's ties to the Mafia.
Eventually, the bank had to repay more than $200
million to its creditors. But Marcinkus was never
indicted of a crime, and though he was suspected of
being involved in several mysterious deaths,
including Pope John Paul I's, Marcinkus
successfully claimed diplomatic immunity in the
United States and retired to Arizona in 1990, and
died there 16 years later.

8. There's no vice pope

Once a cardinal becomes the pope, he's the
designated leader of the Catholic Church and God's
representative on Earth for the rest of his life —
which was basically the case until Pope Benedict
XVI's surprise resignation last month. (Up until
then, it had been more than 500 years since the last
papal resignation.) Further, as modern medicine
improves, even seriously ill people tend to stick
around longer, meaning that a pope could be alive
but unable to perform his duties for years, as was
the case with John Paul II. What happens then?
Well, no one is really sure. A cardinal can take over
the pope's responsibilities as the Vatican's head of
state, but no one else is allowed to carry out his
ceremonial duties. In the end, many masses and
benedictions simply go unperformed until the pope
either passes away or recovers.

9. Faith-based economics

The Vatican needs several hundred million dollars
per year to operate. Its many financial
responsibilities include running international
embassies, paying for the pope's travels around the
world, maintaining ancient cathedrals, and donating
considerable resources to schools, churches, and
health care centers. So where does that money
come from? Catholics pay tithes to their local
parishes and donate about $100 million every year
to the Vatican itself. But collection plates aren't the
Vatican's only source of money. The city-state also
gets cash from books, museums, stamps, and
souvenir shops. (Get your limited-edition Vatican
euros!)
But that's not always enough. At the end of 2007,
the city-state was $13.5 million in the hole. Part of
the problem was the weakened American dollar,
which translated into less purchasing power.
Another contributing factor was the lackluster
performance of the Vatican's newspaper,
L'Osservatore Romano. To boost subscriptions,
Pope Benedict asked the editor to spice up the
layout with more photos and allowed him to cover
world news stories in addition to the traditional
religious fare.

10. Even the ATMS are in Latin

The Vatican Bank is the only bank in the world that
allows ATM users to select Latin to perform
transactions. That's just one symbol of the Holy
See's continued devotion to the language. Pope
Benedict XVI had been particularly passionate
about reviving the language and purportedly held
many informal conversations in Latin. (Pope John
Paul II generally spoke Polish.)
The Vatican's Latin Foundation tries to keep the
language relevant by translating modern phrases
into the ancient tongue. In 2003, they released an
updated dictionary that included the terms "rush
hour" (tempus maximae frequentiae) and
"dishwasher" (escariorum lavatory).