Saint Stephen of the Abyssinians is an Ethiopian Catholic church located in the Vatican City. The church dedicated to Stephen the Protomartyr is the national church of Ethiopia. The liturgy is celebrated according to the Alexandrian rite of the Ethiopian Catholic Church. It is one of the only standing structures in the Vatican to survive the destruction of Old St. Peter's Basilica (c. 1505), and thus it is the oldest surviving church in Vatican City.

Charitable institutions attached to churches in Rome were founded right through the medieval period and included hospitals, hostels, and others providing assistance to pilgrims to Rome from a certain "nation", which thus became these nations' national churches in Rome. These institutions were generally organized as confraternities and funded through charity and legacies from rich benefactors belonging to that "nation". Often, they were also connected to national scholæ, where the clergymen of that nation were trained. The churches and their riches were a sign of the importance of their nation and of the prelates that supported them. Up to 1870 and Italian unification, these national churches also included churches of the Italian states.