Premium Members Get 10% Off and Earn Rewards Find Out More

The Pope's Last Crusade: How an American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI's Campaign to Stop Hitler

Add to Wishlist

The Pope's Last Crusade: How an American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI's Campaign to Stop Hitler

Paperback(Large Print)

$29.99

View All Available Formats & Editions

Paperback(Large Print)
$29.99

View All Available Formats & Editions

SHIP THIS ITEM

Qualifies for Free Shipping
PICK UP IN STORE
Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Available within 2 business hours

Want it Today?
Check Store Availability

Related collections and offers

Overview

A conspiracy within the Vatican—to stop an outspoken Pope

In 1938, Pope Pius XI was the world's most prominent critic of the Nazi Party. To make his voice heard, Pius called upon an American Jesuit, John LaFarge, to write a papal encyclical—the Vatican's strongest decree—publicly condemning Hitler's murderous campaign.

But conservative members in the Vatican like Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli toiled in secret to suppress the document from appearing. Pacelli, who would become Pope Pius XII, colluded with others to keep the finished encyclical from reaching the increasingly-ill Pope.

Peter Eisner, award-winning reporter and author of the critically acclaimed The Freedom Line, reports shocking new evidence (released only recently from Vatican archives) of this deceit.

An astonishing tale of intrigue and sedition, The Pope's Last Crusade is a compelling journey into the heart of the Vatican. A truly essential work, it brings new light to one of the most critical junctures in modern history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062222978
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/19/2013
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	394
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Peter Eisner has been an editor and reporter at the Washington Post, Newsday, and the Associated Press. His 2004 book, The Freedom Line, was the recipient of the Christopher Award. Eisner also won the InterAmerican Press Association Award in 1991, and was nominated for an Emmy in 2010 for his role as producer at the PBS news program World Focus. Eisner's other books include The Italian Letter, written with Knut Royce, which traces fraudulent U.S. intelligence prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Prologue: A Settling of Accounts 1

1 Nostalgia Confronts Reality 7

2 A "Crooked Cross" 19

3 The Imposition of the Reich 36

4 The Pope's Battle Plan 50

5 The Flying Cardinal 68

6 A Democratic Response 84

7 In the Heat of the Summer 101

8 The Pope's Discontent 120

9 Shame and Despair 142

10 A New Year and an End to Appeasement 158

11 Will There Be Time? 170

12 Change Overnight 185

13 The New Regime 204

Epilogue 221

Acknowledgments 233

Excerpts from Lafarge's Encyclical 237

Notes 245

Bibliography 273

Index 279

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

Gripping. ... Finally, the story of a lost opportunity that could have affected the course of history can now be told.

Voice of Reason

Eisner (The Freedom Line) resorts to dramatization and speculation (“The pope woke up... feeling as well rested as he had in recent days”), undercutting his efforts to persuade readers of the accuracy of his account in this less-than-thrilling tale of the little-known efforts by the Vatican to counter the Nazis before WWII. Pope Pius XI has been all but eclipsed in historical memory by the contentious reputation of his successor, Pius XII, who is regarded as having done far less than he could have to counter Hitler and to rescue the Jews of Europe from concentration camps. According to Eisner, the Vatican’s track record might have been different if Pius XI had lived to deliver a speech in 1939 condemning the German regime—that speech would have been based on the thinking of the Rev. John LaFarge, an American, who, two years earlier, had written a book (Interracial Justice) calling for church action against racism, and whom Pius XI had commissioned to write a papal encyclical on the same subject. Putting aside the author’s what-ifs, Eisner has done history and the Vatican a service by retrieving from obscurity a significant episode in Catholic-Jewish relations. Agent: Flip Brophy, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar. 1)

Publishers Weekly

Engrossing. ... Lively.” — Library Journal
“An exciting reminder of how Vatican machinations continue to haunt history.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Gripping. ... Finally, the story of a lost opportunity that could have affected the course of history can now be told.” — Voice of Reason

From the Publisher

The story of the race to compose a last top-secret encyclical against Nazi racism before the death of Pope Pius XI. Notwithstanding the spate of current works on the tragic shortcomings of Pius XII during World War II, journalist and producer Eisner (The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II, 2004, etc.) refocuses the spotlight in this relevant study on his predecessor, who did speak out against anti-Semitism and the threat of Nazism--though he was silenced by an untimely death in 1939. Pius XI, an activist pope since 1922 under whom the Vatican ultimately became an independent city-state achieving political and financial stability, had been deeply moved by an American Jesuit priest's 1937 book Interracial Justice, about his work among poor Maryland blacks, and summoned the author, Rev. John LaFarge, to the Vatican in 1938. In his 80s, Pius XI had a serious heart condition, yet the growing Nazi menace demanded action: The year before, Pius had issued an important encyclical, With Deep Anxiety, slamming the Nazis for racist policies and oppression of Catholics; now, aware he was on death's door, Pius was determined to go further in a new message he urged LaFarge to write swiftly and in secret. Eisner traces LaFarge's work in Paris over the summer of 1938 and his missteps in confiding in the pope's Superior General Ledochowski as a go-between, a shadowy figure who allowed the document to languish while the pope grew more ill. Ledochowski, like the pope's secretary of state Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pius XII), believed that the pope was imbalanced and that communism (and Jews) was the menace, not Nazism. Eisner closes with excerpts from LaFarge's powerful encyclical and the chilling suggestion of what might have been the outcome had it been published. An exciting reminder of how Vatican machinations continue to haunt history.

Kirkus Reviews

The Pope's Last Crusade: How an American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI's Campaign to Stop Hitler

The Pope's Last Crusade: How an American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI's Campaign to Stop Hitler

Paperback(Large Print)

Paperback(Large Print)

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews