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Hey, bert: you wrote

"The Catholic church is the Vatican."

Careful here: the term "Vatican" has quite a polysemic spread.

So yes; but only if you are using "Vatican" as a metonym for the "Catholic Church," especially in its centralized governance relating especially to global administratiom.

But no, in the wider historic sense this is not so, since there was a "Catholic Church" before there was a Vatican, and even before there was anything like central governance.

For instance, "the Vatican" did not convene the Council of Jerusalem (book of Acts), nor did it convene the First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea), although it was understood that the Bishop of Rome was needed to "receive" or decisively confirm its decisions.

Like every bishop, the popes beginning even in the 1st and 2nd centuries were surrounded by priests, some of whom functioned as their emissaries and advisors. Any diocese had colleges of priests who met regularly to form councils to help extend the bishop's leadership. Thus the Pope surrounded himself with other bishops around Rome to hear their advice.

However, the word "curia" was not even used in the Church by a papal document in 1089, during the reign of Pope Urban II. So the "Vatican" as the seat of the "curia" was not totally centralized in the first centuries or even the first millennium of the Church.

There was a Catholic Church before there was a Vatican. If the Vatican got nuked to dust by ISIS, there would still be a Catholic Church.