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This the first scholarly study of the finances and financiers of the Vatican between 1850 and 1950. Dr Pollard, a leading historian of the papacy, explores the transformation of the Vatican into a major financial power and the part this played in the developement of the modern papacy. Using hitherto unexplored sources, he sheds new light on tensions between the Vatican's engagement with capitalism and the Church's social teaching and conflicts between the Vatican and the Allies during the Second World War and the early Cold War.
This book examines the development of Italian Fascism, and surveys the themes and issues of the movement. It includes fully integrated analysis, extensive notes on sources, a glossary, and a useful guide to further reading.
Most histories of World War I revolve around gruesome battles, ribboned generals and feats of military heroism. All too often the acts of those who tried to stop the fighting by word or deed have been drowned out by the roar of cannons. Yet even in the heat of battle individuals of courage stepped forward and attempted to bring the better part of humanity out of darkness and to revive the phoenix of peace. This book tells in detail the stories of these people and their organizations, in Asia, North and South America and Europe. Henry Ford's "peace ship" of December 1915, the famous Christmas truce of 1914, secret diplomatic missions by Austro-Hungarian Prince Sixtus, and myriad other efforts are described, showing that the desire for peace was widespread and fervent.
A thoughtful, highly acclaimed biography of Giovanni Battista Montini, Paul VI, which sheds light on and powerfully underscores the personal and ecclesial sides of a man who brought modernity to the church.
In the corridors of the Vatican on the eve of World War II, American Catholic priest Joseph Patrick Hurley found himself in the midst of secret diplomatic dealings and intense debate. Hurley’s deeply felt American patriotism and fixed ideas about confronting Nazism directly led to a mighty clash with Pope Pius XII. It was 1939, the earliest days of Pius’s papacy, and controversy within the Vatican over policy toward Nazi Germany was already heated. This groundbreaking book is both a biography of Joseph Hurley, the first American to achieve the rank of nuncio, or Vatican ambassador, and an insider’s view of the alleged silence of the pope on the Holocaust and Nazism. Drawing on Hurley’s unpublished archives, the book documents critical debates in Pope Pius’s Vatican, secret U.S.-Vatican dealings, the influence of Detroit’s flamboyant anti-Semitic priest Charles E. Coughlin, and the controversial case of Croatia’s Cardinal Stepinac. The book also sheds light on the powerful connections between religion and politics in the twentieth century.
The essays that comprise this study of 20th-century fascism shift the focus away from the German and Italian models and towards the influence of fascist ideology within other countries.
What would a divinely ordained social order look like? Pre&–Vatican II Catholics, from archbishops and theologians to Catholic union workers and laborers on U.S. farms, argued repeatedly about this in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Debating God&’s Economy is a history of American Catholic economic debates taking place during the generation preceding Vatican II. At that time, American society was rife with sociopolitical debates over the relative merits and dangers of Marxism, capitalism, and socialism; labor unions, class consciousness, and economic power were the watchwords of the day. This was a time of immense social change, and, especially in the light of the monu...
From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, this book traces the political intrigue and inner workings of the Catholic Church. Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this book is about the church's accumulation of wealth and its byzantine entanglements with financial markets across the world. Told through 200 years of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and the Popes who oversee it all, Gerald Posner uncovers an eyebrow-raising account of money and power in perhaps the most influential organization in the history of the world. God's Bankershas it all: a rare exposé and an astounding saga marked by pois...