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Jul 18, 2026
Flirting with Evil
The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation
Summary
It's a shadowy, ornate world of cover-ups and hidden motives. In Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation (Apollo, 2026), Ambrogio Caiani lifts back the heavy velvet curtains of thechancel 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 century, sketching not only scandalous stories of corruption but also lively portrayals of Catholicism's key characters—from a beret-clad communist revolutionary priest to the bizarre morning routine of the pope who followed a daily cold bath with dry unbuttered toast. Caiani, a critical Catholic himself, takes a frank and sceptical look at the trajectory of global Catholicism and wrestles with vital questions about the future of the church. Taking in the wider socio-political contexts of a world at war and the accumulating momentum of social progress, this brilliant history traces the evolution of the Catholic church alongside the development of our modern society right up to the election of Pope Leo XIV in 2025.
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Charles Coutinho
Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles.
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