> Given the world landscape, and the obvious and apparent trend towards democratization by nearly all of the worlds' actors -- it's a curiosity why this trend h

> Given the world landscape, and the obvious and apparent trend towards democratization by nearly all of the worlds' actors -- it's a curiosity why this trend hasn't seemed to grab at the Vatican. I don't find it obvious that a church (with a "higher calling") should necessarily follow trends by secular governments with different purposes. As best I understand (being not a Catholic), The Vatican is not a frail government at risk of being overthrown by discontented citizens but rather a representative of divine authority to its "citizens" (i.e. Catholics worldwide). Why would it need to change its governmental structure to follow trends in secular governments? I'm also unsure what to think of the idea that "nearly all the world's actors" are democratized. While most countries are nominally republics in some fashion, it's probably too simplistic to think they are all similarly democratized. For example, Russia is on Wikipedia's list of "presidential-parliamentary" governments[0] but in practice it's likely a pure dictatorship. As an aside, there is an interesting report from Varieties of Democracy[1] indicating that world governments are roughly split 50/50 between democratic and autocratic implementations but 71% of the worlds population are under the latter[2]. I don't know this organization, but they look legitimate at a cursory glance and thinking about the numbers in terms of affected population is interesting. The "apparent trend towards democratization" may not be as apparent as you think? > We have seen plenty of monarchies transition into other organizations, it's not somehow rare -- but the Vatican has resisted this This is not surprising? I might need to read more history books but it seems like other monarchies, including ones where the head of state is also the head of a church, have an actual state to manage. The Vatican (again, I might just be uninformed) seems to be just a church? It answers to a deity, not its members, and has no purpose other than the perpetuation of its deity's mission. It is a sovereign City State, but no meaningful trade or military footprint. Contrast that with the British monarchs who ran the Church of England but also _The British Empire_. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of_government#President-parliamentary_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of... [1] https://v-dem.net/about/ https://v-dem.net/about/ [2] https://v-dem.net/documents/43/v-dem_dr2024_lowres.pdf https://v-dem.net/documents/43/v-dem_dr2024_lowres.pdf