Vatican City - a philatelic introduction
Our friend John Schorn reports:
When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected as Pope Francis in 2013, he became not only the spiritual leader of more than 1 billion Roman Catholics; he also became the temporal leader of Vatican City, which is the smallest sovereign state in the world – and one that issues its own postage stamps. Vatican City’s stamps are popular among tourists and pilgrims, who drop postcards and letters into bright yellow mailboxes in St. Peter’s Square. Church offices also use them to send official mail. And, not surprisingly, they are popular among many stamp collectors.
Vatican City’s first postage stamps were issued in 1929, shortly after the ratification of the Lateran Treaty that formally established Vatican City’s independence. That first set of stamps depicted the then-reigning pope, Pius XI. Since that time, each successive pope has been depicted on Vatican stamps.
Pope Francis first appeared on Vatican City’s stamps in 2013, in a four-stamp set commemorating his inauguration as pontiff. Each stamp in the set depicted a photograph of Francis, and the four denominations covered the basic letter rates to: Vatican City, Italy, and San Marino; the rest of Europe; Africa, Asia, and the Americas; and Oceania. Each year since then, to mark the anniversary of his pontificate, the Vatican post office has issued a similar 4-stamp set featuring photos of Francis from the preceding year. The 13th annual, presumably final, set in this series was issued on February 27, 2025.
Like his immediate predecessors, Francis traveled extensively, visiting 66 countries during his 12-year reign. Beginning in 2014, the Vatican post office issued a set of stamps commemorating Francis’s pastoral visits in the preceding year.
In addition, Francis has been depicted on many other Vatican stamps. One notable issue commemorated the March 2020 prayer service that Francis led at the height of the COVID pandemic. Unlike the usual smiling portraits shown on other stamps, this one has a somber depiction of him from the rear, walking alone in the rain up the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica at the start of the service.
An embarrassing situation occurred in May 2023, when the Vatican post office issued a €3.10 stamp drawing attention to the World Youth Day festival to be held in Lisbon later that year. The stamp features a drawing of Pope Francis and a group of children on the parapet of Lisbon’s “Monument to Discoveries,” which honored Prince Henry the Navigator. Because the monument celebrates Portugal’s colonial past, the stamp was soundly criticized by many Portuguese leaders and was withdrawn from sale after only two days. The Vatican post office has not revealed how many stamps were issued during that brief period, but copies soon began to change hands at high prices, with recent online auctions showing mint examples trading around €1200.
Since 1300, it has been a tradition for popes to periodically declare “Holy Years”, or jubilees. The jubilees are opportunities for believers to make pilgrimages to designated churches, which have designated “Holy Doors” for the faithful to pass through. Pope Francis designated 2025 as a Holy Year, and he opened Holy Doors at St. Peter’s Basilica and the chapel of Rome’s Rebibbia prison. In early 2025, the Vatican post office issued a set of four stamps commemorating the jubilee, and two of the values show Francis, seated in his wheelchair, pushing open those two Holy Doors.
On April 28, 2025, just a week after Francis’s death at age 88, per its custom, the Vatican post office issued a set of “Sede Vacante” or “Vacant Seat” stamps. These stamps feature the umbraculum, a ceremonial umbrella that is the symbol of the Cardinal Camerlengo, or chamberlain, who oversees the Catholic church’s temporal affairs until a new pope is elected. With this Sede Vacante set, the Franciscan era of Vatican stamps came to a close.