Not many countries have played host to several popes over the years. Fewer nations still can say they were founded by a saint. And only one such country can boast of all that, with a population of only 35,000 people.
But that’s San Marino — a tiny nation, with an unusually significant role in the history of the Church.
And on Saturday, Pope Leo will head to the micronation, one of the oldest sovereign states in the world, which has not received a pope since 2011, when Pope Benedict XVI made a similar pastoral visit.
San Marino enjoys a privileged relationship with the Holy See, fully surrounded by the Papal States for centuries, and having been under papal protection for much of its history, but preserving its independence all the while.
But why is the pope traveling to San Marino? Why is San Marino even a country?
The Pillar explains.
What is the pope doing in San Marino?
The pope will meet with the country’s authorities, including the Captains Regent – the country’s “co-presidents” – and will then greet those present and impart his apostolic blessing from San Marino’s Palazzo Publico.
He will later travel to the Basilica of San Marino and will lead a holy hour, along with the veneration of the relics of Saint Marinus – the founder of the country – and will greet Catholics before leaving around noon. He will then visit a community of Augustinian nuns in Pennabilli, a nearby town.
The pope is then expected to attend the Italian city of Rimini, for the famous — in some circles — “Rimini Meeting,” which
The Rimini gathering is organized annually by Communion and Liberation each year and has become one of the biggest encounters of political, religious, cultural, and artistic personalities in Italy.
Saint John Paul II was the first – and only – pope to attend the meeting in 1982. While Pope Benedict XVI visited Rimini and San Marino in 2011, his visit did not occur during the meeting, which he had attended previously as a cardinal in 1990.
Pope Leo is also set to meet with the poor, the sick and the elderly in Rimini’s cathedral, and to celebrate Mass in a city square before returning to Rome.
How did San Marino come to be?
San Marino’s history is deeply connected to the Catholic Church — and also its continued existence.
In 301, Saint Marinus, then a stonemason, arrived in Monte Titano from Rab, in Dalmatia, present-day Croatia and founded a small community of Christians. Some stories say he was fleeing Diocletian’s persecution – the last great persecution of Christians in ancient Rome – and was ordained a deacon in Rimini. Later, according to the story, he fled Rimini after a mad woman claimed she was her estranged husband and founded the community at Monte Titano.
Another version says that Marinus heard the nearby town of Rimini was being rebuilt, and travelled there looking for work. However, he noticed that many of the workmen were Christians of noble origin or from rich families, who had been sentenced to forced labor for refusing to present sacrifices to the gods. Therefore, he sought to comfort and accompany them and, later, in his old age founded the community in Monte Titano.
As his reputation for holiness grew, so did the community. Eventually, a noblewoman from Rimini, who owned Monte Titano, decided to give the whole mountain to Marinus as a gift.
Saint Marinus died in 366 and, according to the legend, his last words were prophetic for most of the Sanmarinese: Relinquo vos liberos ab utroque homine (”I leave you free from both men”). The Sanmarinese have usually interpreted them as Marinus freeing them from the Empire and later the pope, through the papal states.
While San Marino’s founding story is thought to be a mix of fact and legend, the 755 Liber Pontificalis mentions a Castellum Sancta Marini that many believe refers to San Marino, while the oldest document to speak of the existence of a Monastic community in Monte Titano dates back to 885.
The community eventually evolved into a town years later and in 1234 the first two consuls – now called Captains Regent – were appointed as heads of state that rotated each six months, which is still the case today.
The first documentary mention of San Marino’s statutes dates to 1253, while the oldest surviving copy of the statutes date back to 1295. However, its current constitutional framework is based mainly on the Statutes of 1600, considered the oldest written constitution still in force in the world.
Why isn’t San Marino just part of Italy?
San Marino was surrounded by the Papal States for centuries, but enjoyed papal support for most of its history.
In 1463, the pope awarded the towns of Fiorentino, Montegiardino, and Serravalle to San Marino, while the town of Faetano decided to join San Marino a year later, defining its current borders. Pope Urban VIII placed it under papal protection and recognized its sovereignty in 1631.
San Marino was never formally annexed by another nation but it has been occupied three times — twice with the involvement of the Church.
Cesare Borgia – the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI – occupied San Marino for six months in 1503 but upon his father’s death, the 26-day papacy of Pius III, and the election of Julius II, he was forced to leave San Marino.
Cardinal Giulio Alberoni also occupied the country between 1739 and 1740 on Pope Clement XII’s behalf, but after much local, curial, and international opposition, was forced to restore San Marino’s independence.
Napoleon respected San Marino’s sovereignty during the invasion of Italy, even offering to expand its territory, something that Sanmarinese authorities refused at the time. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 recognized San Marino as an independent country after the Napoleonic Wars.
San Marino gave refuge to Giuseppe Garibaldi and 2,000 of his soldiers during Italy’s unification war in 1849, and, in turn, once Garibaldi and his forces won the war, recognized San Marino’s independence.
San Marino also gave asylum to some 100,000 Italians from nearby cities during World War II, at a time when the country had only about 15,000 inhabitants. It was briefly — and for the last time — occupied in September 1944 by German forces, who were defeated by the Allies later that month.
Is Leo the first pope to visit San Marino?
No. In modern times, both Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI went to San Marino. Like Leo, Saint John Paul II went both to San Marino and the Rimini meeting. He celebrated Mass at the Seravalle stadium in San Marino, then addressed the participants of the Rimini meeting, and celebrated Mass at Rimini’s port in the evening.
Benedict XVI made a visit to the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro – which includes some towns in the Italian regions of Emilia-Romagna, Marche, and Tuscany, and all of San Marino – on June 19, 2011, celebrating Mass at the Serravalle stadium and met with Sanmarinesse authorities. He later also met with young Catholics at Pennabilli.
But Benedict XVI and John Paul II weren’t the first popes to go to San Marino.
Gregory XII fled Rome to Rimini during the Western Schism in 1408. Gregory XII was later deposed by the council of cardinals in 1409 as schismatic and heretical and faced rival claims from Avignon and Pisa. Gregory eventually resigned the papacy in 1415 to end the schism.
While some Sanmarinese claim he’s the first pope to have visited their country and there are historical records indicating that he was only a few miles from Monte Titano, it is actually unclear whether he ever set foot in San Marino itself.
However, Pope Julius II – nicknamed “The Warrior Pope” – did definitely go to San Marino in 1506. As he passed Macerata Feltria in one of his campaigns to restore papal rule in the north of Italy, he was surprised by seeing snow in Monte Titano on September 29, so he decided to climb the mounting and stay at a lodging in San Marino — just a day after Niccolo Machiavelli had also arrived in San Marino.
He also allegedly paid a second visit to San Marino in 1510, although there are no contemporary records of such a visit.
How is the Church in San Marino organized?
85% of San Marino’s 35,000 inhabitants are Catholic and are served by 19 priests across 12 parishes. San Marino is one of the two majority-Catholic countries in the world without its own cathedral, alongside Andorra.
San Marino doesn’t have its own diocese, but it’s part of the Diocese of Montefeltro-San Marino, led by Bishop Domenico Beneventi since 2024. The Diocese of Montefeltro-San Marino is one of the few dioceses in the world with territory in two different countries – much like Andorra, which is part of the Diocese of Urgell, which covers parts of Catalonia in Spain.
In fact, San Marino’s parishes were divided between the Diocese of Montefeltro and the Diocese of Rimini until a territorial reorganization in 1977.
Who is the most prominent Sanmarinese citizen?
Locals would perhaps reply that it’s Massimo Bonini, a Sanmarinese football player for Italian club Juventus F.C. in the 1980s or Manuel Poggiali, two-times motorcycle Grand Prix world champion.
Some may say that it’s Alessandra Perilli, a sports shooter who became the first Sanmarinese to win an olympic medal in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics or Antonio Onofri, considered the Father of San Marino and the architect of the republic’s preservation of independence during the Napoleonic wars.
But, in fact, one plausible response is Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln became an honorary citizen of San Marino in 1861, shortly after becoming U.S. president.
Lincoln responded to the honor with a letter, still in San Marino’s state archives, thanking the country’s Captain Regents for the honor and saying that “Although your dominion is small, your State is nevertheless one of the most honored, in all history. It has by its experience demonstrated the truth, so full of encouragement to the friends of Humanity, that Government founded on Republican principles is capable of being so administered as to be secure and enduring.”
“Wishing that your interesting State may endure and flourish forever, and that you may live long and enjoy the confidence and secure the gratitude of your fellow citizens, I pray God to have you in his holy keeping,” he concluded.
As of today, there is a bust of Lincoln in San Marino’s Palazzo Publico.