Editing Church of Sanctaria (section)

====Temporal sovereignty====
Procedures for acceding to the Papal States of Sanctaria were established by Patriarch Aequitas II in 1538. Chief among them was that the nation in question must profess the Sanctarian Catholic faith as the "one and only true faith" of its jurisdiction, and secondly that the nation's leaders must submit to the rule of the Patriarch, both temporally and spiritually. In most cases, such as that of [[Buckingham]], nations that voluntarily joined the Papal States did so for financial and security reasons. Buckingham was a highly agrarian society and had recently been severely affected by a great famine of their corn corp, a crop most of their most indigent population relied on for basic sustenance. Though it was true most of the population had become devout Catholics thanks to the missionaries of the Church of Sanctaria in previous decades, it was only when Patriarch Simon VII promised the nation in 1544 that he would ensure food and medicine reached the devastated communities that the nation applied to join the growing theocratic empire.
[[File:Massacre of Clan Nich.jpg|thumb|''The Massacre at Clan Nich'' - artist unknown]]
Right by conquest, however, was the most common way that the Papal States incorporated new lands and nations as colonies or constituent states. The Blessed Army, which by 1580 had grown to be a standing army of over 100,000 men-at-arms, as well as a growing number of battleships, very often went unmatched in clashes with native farmsmen or sellswords in the invaded lands. While scholars have documented countless numbers of atrocities, and what would now be considered war crimes, committed by the Blessed Army in many of its conquests, it was the invasion of [[Clan Nich]] in 1609 that counts as the most bloody. Clan Nich, a small island community located in a different region than the [[International Democratic Union|IDU]] lay in the middle of a favoured trade route of the Papal States - and lay on top of rich salt mines too; salt, a rare commodity in the Papal States at this point, was used to preserve foods. The inhabitants of Clan Nich were primarily fisherman and were not adherents in any way to the Church of Sanctaria. After they refused to allow the Papal States to access their resources, Patriarch Paul VII ordered the papal army to take what they needed by force. The inhabitants of the island of Clan Nich were unable to put up any significant fight and, of the roughly 50,000 male inhabitants of the island, only 4000 were reported to have survived. It was also documented that many soldiers within the Blessed Army raped and imprisoned many women from the island, with priests travelling with the army permitting it as a form of "forced conversion". Soon after the Massacre at Clan Nich, as it has become known amongst modern-day inhabitants of the island - and the name by which the Divine Republic of Sanctaria in 1993 apologised on behalf of its previous iteration - Paul VII appointed a governor, or doge, as his representative on the island, and Clan Nich was formally entered into the Papal States on 01 October 1610.

Adherence to the Church of Sanctaria, however, wasn't always the red line issue some patriarchs had made it out to be. One notable nation that was a part of the Papal States but was permitted to retain its native religion was [[Holy Thebes]]. While they were required to accept the Patriarch of the Church of Sanctaria to be their sovereign, the then-Patriarch Stephan VI allowed them to continue practicing their animalistic religion. The Thebans harvested leaves from local plants and brewed them into a form of hot drink, like a tea, but the plants they picked from very often had hallucinogenic properties. This tea proved very popular with the upper classes, not only in Sanctaria and the Papal States, but around the [[International Democratic Union]] too. The wealthy elite back in mainland Sanctaria lobbied the papal office hard to allow the Thebans to continue producing and harvesting these leaves, which they only were able to do after working themselves up into a frenzy as part of their religious ceremonies. Stephan VI, and his successors, all allowed the native Thebans to continue worshiping their native religion, well after Holy Thebes joined the Papal States in 1598; modern religious scholars use this as a primary example of where the Church's dedication to religion was allowed to come second to its profits and standing amongst the elite.

At its absolute height in 1800, the Papal States had, either through right of conquest, voluntary accession, or accession via duress, [[Constituent States of the Papal States of Sanctaria|thirty eight nations]] constituting its theocratic empire, not including the original, and mother country, Sanctaria itself.