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 German agent.
During World War II, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United States
sent spies into the Vatican to discover the pope's intentions. The
Nazis were especially resourceful, securing the services of
apostate priests, such as Herbert Keller, an unscrupulous monk who
exposed Pope Pius XII's involvement in a plot against Hitler, and
devising a plan to establish a "seminary" in Rome with agents
posing as student priests. Alvarez recounts these operations and
many more, including the methods by which the Vatican learned about
the Holocaust.
Based on diplomatic and intelligence records in Britain, France,
Italy, Spain, the United States, and the Vatican--with the latter
including documents sealed after the author had access to
them--"Spies in the Vatican" reveals that the Papacy often was
hindered by its inability to collect timely and relevant
intelligence and that it made little effort to improve its
intelligence capabilities after 1870. Challenging the long-held
notion that the pope is the world's best-informed leader, Alvarez
illuminates not only the inner workings of the Vatican but also the
global events in which it was inextricably involved.
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