Religion

A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s battle to remake Christian Europe by Giuliana Chamedes

Item: A Twentieth-Century Crusade
Author: Paul Collins

by Paul Collins •

March 2020, no. 419

Harvard University Press (Footprint) $85 hb, 432 pp

Religion

A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s battle to remake Christian Europe by Giuliana Chamedes

by Paul Collins •

March 2020, no. 419

The papacy’s role in international affairs is often underestimated. A recent example is Pope Francis’s participation in the 2015 negotiations leading to a détente between Cuba and the United States. It helped, of course, that Barack Obama was president and that Raúl Castro had replaced his brother Fidel in Havana; but it was Francis, building on the work of his predecessors who had maintained continuous relations with the Castro regime, who brought the two sides together, and who persuaded the United States to drop its sanctions against Cuba.

Paul Collins

By this contributor

Paul Collins is an historian, broadcaster and writer. A Catholic priest for thirty-three years, he resigned from the active ministry in 2001 following a dispute with the Vatican over his book Papal Power (1997). He is the author of fifteen books. The most recent is Absolute Power: How the pope became the most influential man in the world (2018). A former head of the religion and ethics department in the ABC, he is well known as a commentator on Catholicism and the papacy and also has a strong interest in ethics, environmental and population issues.