This is the script for my video posted on September 17, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.
The Catholic Church wields one of the oldest and widest intelligence networks in the world. But it’s not like the Pope is ordering assassinations or operating a network of spies. So if Vatican City doesn’t even have an intelligence agency, why is it so good at collecting intelligence?
First off, we should make a quick distinction. The Pope actually carries two separate roles at the same time. He heads the Holy See, the central government of the Catholic Church, and as pope he's also the sovereign of Vatican City, with full legislative, executive, and judicial power there.
These are naturally conflated a lot of the time, but they are different. Vatican City is the physical state, while the Holy See is the sovereign entity recognized under international law, and it's the Holy See that conducts diplomacy, signs treaties, and sends papal diplomats.
Today 184 states maintain diplomatic relations with the Holy See, as well as the EU and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It notably does not have relations with a handful of states, including China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and the Maldives.
It handles those relations through what are called apostolic nunciatures, the diplomatic equivalent of an embassy. Around 110 countries host a resident nuncio, and the rest are covered by a nuncio based in a neighboring country who's accredited to several states at once.
Now obviously these don't issue visas or passports. Instead, a nuncio represents the Holy See in two directions: to the host government, and to the local Catholic Church.
There are over 1.4b Catholics around the world today, or about 17.8% of the global population, including over 400k priests, 5430 bishops, and countless others loyal to the Holy See. The Catholic Church operates around 229k schools for children, over 100k charity and health centers, as well as non-profits, universities, and other institutions.
You can imagine that such a sprawling web of people who truly benefit from the church would be willing to share information. Nuncios send diplomatic cables to the Holy See’s Secretariat of State on political, economic, and social developments, as well as church matters.
Bishops also periodically travel to Rome to report on their dioceses, and there are many cases where religious orders operate where states and journalists cannot. Nuncios have also famously stayed put in war zones like Ukraine and Syria after most other diplomats left. All of this has earned the Holy See a long-standing reputation as one of the best-informed institutions on Earth, though some argue it's often been less informed than the governments trying to spy on it.
One of those religious orders is the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. They're an all-male order with their own leadership, a Superior General based in Rome, but the order’s fully professed members take a special fourth vow of obedience to the Pope when it comes to missions. Pope Francis was actually the first Jesuit pope, and so far the only one. The Society of Jesus had nearly 14k members as of 2024 in over 110 countries, and it's long had a reputation for intelligence-gathering, dating back to Jesuit priests operating covertly in Protestant England.
When we talk about the church collecting intelligence, you might be thinking that there’s something untoward going on. But in reality a lot of intelligence collection is just people sharing important information with someone they trust. The church forbids sharing information gained during confession, with automatic excommunication from the church imposed for direct violations. There is no credible evidence that confession is used for intelligence purposes.
That doesn't mean the church has always stayed out of covert affairs. During WWII, Pope Pius XII reportedly acted as a secret go-between for three separate German plots to overthrow Hitler, though historians still debate how involved he really was.
After the war, the church mobilized parishes and the Catholic Action movement to keep Communists from winning Italy's 1948 election, alongside the CIA covertly funding the Christian Democrats and other centrist parties.
The Vatican was also a prime target for communist intelligence. For decades, the Soviet KGB and its Eastern Bloc partners like Poland's SB placed agents in Roman seminaries, stole documents, and planted listening devices.
In 1992, the famous investigative journalist Carl Bernstein reported that when Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II met at the Vatican in June 1982, they privately agreed to a clandestine campaign to keep the Polish trade union Solidarity alive after Poland's communist government suspended it under martial law. Both men had survived assassination attempts the year before and reportedly believed they'd been spared by God for a higher purpose.
John Paul II was Polish and openly opposed the communist regime in his home country. It’s well-documented that the CIA covertly funneled millions of dollars, printing equipment, and communications gear to the Polish underground, while Western unions like the AFL-CIO backed Solidarity largely in the open, though exactly how closely the Holy See itself coordinated with the CIA is still debated.
More recent history is harder to document, since the Holy See usually opens its archives one papacy at a time, decades after the fact. But we have seen popes serve as trusted third parties for complex negotiations, like in 2014 when Pope Francis wrote personally to Obama and Raúl Castro, hosted a key meeting between their negotiators at the Vatican, and acted as guarantor for the agreement to restore relations.
In general, the church is focused on humanitarian issues and preventing conflict. But this is naturally more difficult in places that don’t commonly practice Catholicism. The Holy See offered itself as a neutral venue for talks between Russia and Ukraine, for example, but Russia has resisted. Its foreign minister said it would be awkward for two Orthodox-majority countries to negotiate on Catholic ground, and Russia has long questioned whether the Holy See is really neutral.
The Holy See has also repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and humanitarian access, and it recognizes the State of Palestine and supports a two-state solution.
The Holy See also maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan rather than the People's Republic of China. That's been a sore spot for decades, but in 2018 the Holy See and China signed a provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops. It's been renewed through October 2028, but the terms remain secret. What's been reported is that it gives the Chinese government a say in selecting bishops, with the pope keeping final approval, and that China has since breached it by installing and transferring bishops without papal approval, likely in favor of people the Chinese government deems loyal.
China is one area where the church isn't a neutral party, because control over its own bishops is at stake. But in general, the Holy See has no real military, no territorial ambitions, and no economic interest in the conflicts it mediates, so it's often trusted as an honest broker. With exceptions in individual cases, the church tends to genuinely pursue peace, and the information it collects is pivotal for navigating very complex diplomatic and geopolitical dynamics. But for the most part, this looks like data being aggregated, not clandestine collection.
Keep reading
- How do Vatican City and Italy coexist?
- Why does Estonia run a “data embassy” in Luxembourg?
- Why is Iceland a NATO member if it lacks a military?
I’m writing a book called Groundwork about the buried history beneath geopolitics. Join the waitlist to hear when it has a publisher, a cover, and a release date.