Decisively shaped by the turbulent atmosphere of war, occupation and resistance, the years 1943-1955 gave rise to a most unusual flowering of progressive initiatives in Catholic politics, theology and apostolic missions. Though suffering severe setbacks in the deep freeze of the Cold War politics, mid-Century European Left Catholicism was not without influence in the subsequent emergence of Latin Americam Liberation Theology and the deliberations of the Vatican II. This volume constitutes the first attempt to analyse the phenomenon of Western European Left Catholicism from a comparative and transnational perspective.

Death in the Congo "is a gripping account of a murder that became one of the defining events in postcolonial African history. It is no less the story of the untimely death of a national dream, a hope-filled vision very different from what the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo became in the second half of the twentieth century.

When Belgium relinquished colonial control in June 1960, a charismatic thirty-five-year-old African nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, became prime minister of the new republic. Yet stability immediately broke down. A mutinous Congolese Army spread havoc, while Katanga Province in southeast Congo seceded altogether. Belgium dispatched its military to protect its citizens, and the United Nations soon intervened with its own peacekeeping troops. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, both the Soviet Union and the United States maneuvered to turn the crisis to their Cold War advantage. A coup in September secretly aided by the UN toppled Lumumba s government. In January 1961, armed men drove Lumumba to a secluded corner of the Katanga bush, stood him up beside a hastily dug grave, and shot him. His rule as Africa s first democratically elected leader had lasted ten weeks.

Fifty years later, the murky circumstances and tragic symbolism of Lumumba s assassination still trouble many people around the world. Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick pursue events through a web of international politics, revealing a tangled history in which many people black and white, well-meaning and ruthless, African, European, and American bear responsibility for this crime."