Ocean State Libraries

Dark secrets are revealed in Vatican City in this Gabriel Allon thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva.
In Munich, a Jewish scholar is assassinated. In Venice, Mossad agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon receives the news, puts down his brushes, and leaves immediately. And at the Vatican, the new pope vows to uncover the truth about the church’s response to the Holocaust—while a powerful cardinal...

"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...

The "explosive" (The New York Times) bestseller - now with a new introduction by the author When Hitler's Pope, the shocking story of Pope Pius XII that "redefined the history of the twentieth century" (The Washington Post) was originally published, it sparked a firestorm of controversy both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Now, award-winning journalist John Cornwell has revisited this seminal work of history with a new introduction that both...

In September 1943, Adolf Hitler, furious at the ouster of Mussolini, sent German troops into Rome and ordered SS General Karl Wolff, who had been Heinrich Himmler's chief aide, to occupy the Vatican and kidnap (and perhaps kill) Pope Pius XII. At the same time, plans were being made to deport Rome's Jews to Auschwitz. Wolff began playing a dangerous game: stalling Hitler's plot against the pope, whom he hoped would save him from the noose in case...

In June 1938, after his attempts at diplomacy with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy had failed, Pope Pius XI ordered an American Jesuit, Father John LaFarge, to compose an encyclical denouncing racism and anti-Semitism. The result was a draft called Humani Generis Unitas (The Unity of the Human Race), which LaFarge produced with the help of two other priests. But after Pope Pius XI died early in 1939, his successor, Pius XII, stood by in silence as...