Flirting With Evil

Today I sit down with renowned historian of the Catholic Church, Ambrogio Caiani to discuss his most recent work: Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalization.

The history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is one of spies, scandals and bad

political choices. It's a shadowy, ornate world of cover-ups and hidden motives. In this book,

Ambrogio Caiani lifts back the heavy velvet curtains of the chancel and peers behind the

locked mahogany doors of the Vatican to reveal the shocking truths that make up a century

of Catholic corruption.

For many, Catholicism's flirtation with evil has become impossible to ignore: a pope courting

Nazi officials and, horribly, turning a blind eye to the Holocaust; the Vatican becoming

embroiled in a series of dodgy financial dealings; the child abuse continuously perpetrated

by members of the clergy. Time and time again, Catholic figures have made terrible choices

in private and preached in public about goodness and morality.

This is the first history that focuses exclusively on Catholicism throughout the twentieth