But pagan Rome and apostate Jerusalem do fit the description of a city drunk with the blood of saints and the martyrs of Jesus. And since they were the notorious persecutors of Christians, the original audience would have automatically thought of one of these two as the city that persecutes Christians, not an undreamed of Christian Rome that was centuries in the future. This is a joke. In fact, the Vatican's very existence has been threatened in the past two centuries by Italian nationalism. The Vatican only became a separate city in 1929 when the Holy See and Italy signed the Lateran Treaty.
Hunt again founders by confusing Vatican City and Rome.
And he must get this passage to be talking about Vatican City since the modern city of Rome is a minor player on the stage of contemporary geopolitics. Many national capitols are far more important than it. Since the collapse of the two-superpower system, the most important capitol is Washington, DC, but it does not meet the other criteria for who the Whore is. Hunt neglects the other candidates we have for the Whore. If the reign is a literal, political one then pagan Rome fulfills the requirement far better than Christian Rome ever did.