100 Lire - Ioannes Paulus II Pope Trips

The 1985 Vatican 100 Lire belongs to the annual divisional sets issued under John Paul II, each year's reverse theme rotating through papal activities or doctrinal subjects. By 1985, the pope's foreign travel program had become one of the most logistically ambitious in Church history — he had already visited over 50 countries since his election in 1978. Acmonital, the stainless steel alloy adopted by the Italian state and Vatican in the early 1970s, was chosen specifically for its resistance to corrosion in circulation, though Vatican coins of this period rarely circulated at all, absorbed almost entirely by collectors purchasing the sealed annual sets.