Table of contents

The context - The remote premises - The travails of the temporal power of the popes in the Italy of the Risorgimento - The new internal and international 'status' of the Vatican after the Lateran Pacts - The Holy See's relations with Berlin before the Second World War - Pius XII's policy during the Second World War - The German invasion, the civil war, the new Italy - John XXIII, a free and eccentric innovator - Paul VI, a constituent legislator - From the thirty days of Pope Luciani to the thirty years of Pope Woytila - The self-referential centralisation of the late post-Council. A dead end? - Between illness and the absence of a pope. Signs of ethical disorientation in the Vatican bureaucracy

Keywords

Temporal power of the popes; Vatican City; Lateran Pacts; Vatican bureaucracy