New Books In World Affairs

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