World: Cutting the Vatican Guard

AS late as a century ago, the Pope ruled over a vast domain and maintained his own army to preserve his temporal power. Today, the greatest threats to peace in the 108-acre Vatican City are unmanageable crowds of tourists or occasional cranks who throw rocks at the Pontiff. Accordingly, Pope Paul VI last week disbanded three of the Vatican's four corps of brightly uniformed guards because, he said, they "no longer correspond to the needs for which they were founded." As a result, if a latter-day Stalin were to ask scornfully how many divisions the Pope had, the answer would be...