Spies in the Vatican
：Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust
Publication subTitle ：Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust
Author： Alvarez > David
Publisher： University Press of Kansas
Publication year： 2016
E-ISBN: 9780700622894
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780700612147
Subject： B97 基督教;D8 Diplomacy, International Relations
Keyword： 宗教,外交、国际关系
Language： ENG
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Description
Revered by millions, the Papacy is an international power that many nations have viewed with suspicion, some have tried to control, and not a few have spied upon. Ranging across two centuries of world history, David Alvarez’s fascinating study throws open the Vatican's doors to reveal the startling but little-known world of espionage in one of the most sacred places on earth.
Reviewing the pontificates of ten popes—from Pius VII, Napoleon’s nemesis, to Pius XII, maligned by some as “Hitler’s pope”—Alvarez provides the first history of the intelligence operations and covert activities that reached the highest levels of the Vatican. Populated with world leaders, both famous and infamous, and a rogue’s gallery of professional spies, fallen priests, and mercenary informants, his work casts a bright light into the darker corners of papal history and international diplomacy, a light that often sparkles with a witty appreciation of the foibles of the espionage trade.
Alvarez reveals that the Vatican itself occasionally entered this clandestine world through such operations as a network of informants to spy on liberal Catholics or a covert mission to establish an underground church in the Soviet Union. More frequently, however, the Vatican was the target for hostile intelligence services seeking to expose the secrets of the Papacy. During World War I, for example, Pope Benedict XV’s personal assistant was a secret
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