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If that Catholic heritage of ours means that the Pope is the King of the "Papal States" and He is going to do anything in order to retain his TEMPORAL power and in doing so He is going to fight and hamper the Italian secular republic then I don't care much about that...heritage.

Are you referring to recent history?

In historical term it is indeed recent history.

Thanks most to the firm opposition of the Pope-King, Italy has manage to unite Herself only very recently. The Kingdom if Italy was born on 17 March 1861, less than 150 years ago. We conquered the Papal States and entered Rome on 20 September 1870. Since then the Pope has declared himself a "detainee" of the Kingdom, has refused any offer to settle the dispute with the King Vittorio Emanuele II and has fought very actively against the new Kingdom.

Among other provocative actions, the Pope called the Vatican Council I where the dogma of "infallibility of the Pope" was established. In addition, he threatened to excommunicate every Roman Catholic who dared to vote in the national elections.

As a result, Italian Catholics were asked to decide between loyalty to the Pope and loyalty to the Home Country.

The dispute between Italy and the Pope was not settled until a new creeping leader entered the political arena: Mr Benito Mussolini, the Duce of Italy. Mussolini and the Pope signed the so-called "Lateran Pacts" in 1929 which set the birth of a new "personal" state for the Pope, the Vatican, and established the Roman Catholic as the state religion of Italy. Of course that was a huge political victory for the dictator Mussolini as he gained the support of every Catholic in Italy.

Ok, that's enough, if you want more just ask.