1 Lira - Pavlvs VI - FAO

Issued as part of the Vatican's participation in the FAO's "Food for All" campaign, this series ran through most of Paul VI's final decade — a pontificate defined by the turbulence following the Second Vatican Council and the controversial 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. The FAO collaboration gave the Holy See a platform to engage with secular international development policy at a moment when its moral authority on other fronts was under sustained pressure.

At face value, one lira was effectively worthless in Italian commerce by the early 1970s — the denomination had long ceased to function as genuine currency.