Join us for a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Kertzer about his new book The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler. 

When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those questions have only grown and festered, making Pius XII one of the most controversial popes in Church history, especially now as the Vatican prepares to canonize him.

In 2020, Pius XII’s archives were finally opened, and David Kertzer—widely recognized as one of the world’s leading Vatican scholars—has been mining this new material ever since, revealing how the pope came to set aside moral leadership in order to preserve his church’s power.

Based on thousands of never-before-seen documents not only from the Vatican, but from archives in Italy, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, The Pope at War paints a new, dramatic portrait of what the pope did and did not do as war enveloped the continent and as the Nazis began their systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The book clears away the myths and sheer falsehoods surrounding the pope’s actions from 1939 to 1945, showing why the pope repeatedly bent to the wills of Hitler and Mussolini.

Sponsored by the Michael and Barbara Newmark Institute for Human Relations at the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis, St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, the Office of Peace & Justice of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, St. Louis County Library, St. Louis University Division of Mission and Identity, and the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.

Local independent bookseller Left Bank Books will be on site for purchase of Professor Kertzer’s book.

Please register at rap@wustl.edu or 314-935-9345 so we can appropriately plan.