Today is a national holiday in the Vatican City. The occasion got us musing over the quirkiness of a nation named City, or as it is formally known, the State of the Vatican City.

The name Vatican City is taken from Vaticanus, the Latin name for "a hill on the west bank of the Tiber River in Rome." On this hill is now situated the official residence of the Roman Catholic pope and the independent ecclesiastical city-state over which he presides.

While the pope remains at the Vatican, he sends his personal representatives, called legates, abroad. The term legate has an ancestor in the Latin verb meaning "to send with a commission or charge," and papal legates have three distinct charges. The legate a latere, literally, "legate from the side" in Latin, is a confidential papal legate who is appointed especially for a particular mission and not as a permanent representative. Nuncio, from the Latin term for "messenger," names the top-ranking diplomatic papal envoy accredited to a civil government. He is distinguished from the apostolic delegate, an ecclesiastic plenipotentiary who represents the Church in a country that does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican.