Documents the life of the controversial pope, discussing his religious upbringing, his work as a papal diplomat, his reponses to the persecution of the Jews during World War II, and his appointment of church officials in China, India, and Africa.

In the decade preceding the outbreak of World War II, the Vatican made a devil's bargain with fascist leaders. Anticipating that their regimes would eliminate a common enemy-- Marxist-Leninist communism-- two popes essentially collaborated with Hitler, Mussolini, Franco in Spain, and Pavelić in Croatia. The sheer weight of the evidence that Deschner has brought together in this book raises a host of questions about a powerful institution that continues...

In September, 1943, Adolf Hitler, furious at the ouster of Mussolini, sent German troops into Rome with plans to deport Rome's Jews to Auschwitz. Hitler also ordered SS General Karl Wolff, who had been Heinrich Himmler's chief aide, to occupy the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII. But Wolff began playing a dangerous game: stalling Hitler's kidnap plot, while blackmailing the pope into silence as the Jews were rounded up. This tale of intrigue and betrayal...

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a dominant figure in the history of the Catholic Church and the last of the Church Fathers, died in his monastery in Burgundy on August 20,1153. In commemoration of the eighth centenary of his death, Pope Pius XII issued one of his most significant encyclical letters -- "Doctor Mellifluus"--Which Thomas Merton presents here, together with an introduction to the life and teachings of the great mystic

Draws on new archival research to examine Pope Pius XI's effort to reject Nazism, discussing how he enlisted the assistance of John La Farge, a virtually unknown American Jesuit, to craft a papal encyclical (Humani generis unitas, which was never promulgated) condemning Hitler's campaign against the Jews.

Based on a wealth of documents long buried in the Vatican archives, Prisoner of the Vatican tells the story of the Church's secret attempt to block the unification of Italy and seize control - not in ancient times, but in the late nineteenth century. For more than fifty years, the pope was a self-imposed prisoner within the Vatican walls, planning to flee Italy, to return only as the restored ruler of Rome and the Papal States. The scheme to dismantle...

A revelatory account of the Vatican's efforts to save thousands of Jewish people during World War II refutes beliefs about Pius XII's neutrality.