The Popes Guest

An irrationally optimistic Australian minstrel with a wicked sense of humour takes on the British in the 1970s. It was a way of thinking that was too much fun to last. It came, it flowered and then it grew up and got a mortgage. Tightly crafted and visually immediate. Full of the romance of youth. A must for dreamers and deep thinkers.

Andrew Kirwan's 1864 work describes the history, customs, and mores of entertaining through dinner parties.

The heart-pounding history of how Pope Pius XII -- often labeled "Hitler's Pope" -- was in fact an anti-Nazi spymaster, plotting against the Third Reich during World War II. The Vatican's silence in the face of Nazi atrocities remains one of the great controversies of our time. History has accused wartime pontiff Pius the Twelfth of complicity in the Holocaust and dubbed him "Hitler's Pope." But a key part of the story has remained untold. Pope Pius in fact ran the world's largest church, smallest state, and oldest spy service. Saintly but secretive, he sent birthday cards to Hitler -- while secretly plotting to kill him. He skimmed from church charities to pay covert couriers, and surreptitiously tape-recorded his meetings with top Nazis. Under his leadership the Vatican spy ring actively plotted against the Third Reich. Told with heart-pounding suspense and drawing on secret transcripts and unsealed files by an acclaimed author, Church of Spies throws open the Vatican's doors to reveal some of the most astonishing events in the history of the papacy. Riebling reveals here how the world's greatest moral institution met the greatest moral crisis in history.

Lucrezia Borgia is one of the most vilified women in modern history. The daughter of a notorious pope, she was twice betrothed before the age of eleven and thrice married—one husband was forced to declare himself impotent and thereby unfit and another was murdered by Lucrezia’s own brother, Cesar Borgia. She is cast in the role of murderess, temptress, incestuous lover, loose woman, femme fatale par excellence. But there are two sides to every story. Lucrezia Borgia is the only woman in history to have serve as the head of the Catholic Church. She successfully administered several of Renaissance Italy’s most thriving cities, founded one of the world’s first credit unions, and was a generous patron of the arts. She was mother to a prince and to a cardinal. She was a devoted wife to the Prince of Ferrara, and the lover of the poet Pietro Bembo. She was a child of the renaissance and, in many ways, the world’s first modern woman. In this richly imagined novel, Nobel laureate Dario Fo reveals Lucrezia’s humanity, her passion for life, her compassion for others, and her skill at navigating around her family’s evildoings. The Borgias are unrivalled for the range and magnitude of their political machinations and opportunism. Fo’s brilliance rests in his rendering their story as a shocking mirror image of the uses and abuses of power in our own time. Lucrezia herself becomes a model for how to survive and rise above those abuses. Part Wolf Hall, part House of Cards, The Pope's Daugther will appeal to readers of historical fiction and of contemporary fiction alike and will delight anyone fascinated by Renaissance Italy.

“Monsignor Franco is known as an engaging storyteller of his impactful time in the Church. Read this book and you will see why.” — Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archdiocese of New York Six Popes: A Son of the Church Remembers is Monsignor Hilary C. Franco’s engaging memoir and a story only a son can tell, a son not only of the Catholic Church, but also of Italian immigrants. From Belmont, his Bronx neighborhood, Franco rose to work with the highest and most influential figures of the Roman Catholic Church. As a young man he attended Rome’s premier seminary, soon after becoming the special assistant to Archbishop Fulton Sheen. As a priest he would travel the world, and he recounts a harrowing experience in the Deep South in the early 1960s, his work at the Vatican Councils that redefined the Church, and his time posted at the Church’s diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C., and the United Nations. This most formidable churchman reveals his tales of intellectual, pastoral, and diplomatic service to the Catholic Church, enlivened by recollections of the fascinating people he came to know from U.S. presidents and foreign heads of state, to religious leaders like Padre Pio and Saint Mother Teresa. The title of his current role, Advisor at the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, gives little hint of the drama of the times he recollects. Stories of this book’s six pontiffs that Franco served under — John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis — offer landmarks along Franco’s trek through the corridors of spiritual power in New York, Washington, D.C., and Rome. Six Popes: A Son of the Church Remembers is written from a unique eyewitness vantage on many of the events and movements that shaped our world and the Catholic Church. There is really no other book like it.

Why did the author pick the popes you’ll meet in the pages of this book? Why not Gregory I, whom many would call the greatest pope of all time? Why not Leo X, who was pope at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation? Why not Leo XIII, who boldly stood up for the rights of workers? Every pope is by definition a remarkable man. But the popes whose stories you’ll read here were chosen because they reveal how the papacy developed. They show us how Christ kept his promise to his bride, the Church, not only in her health but also in her sickness. The great popes advanced our understanding of Christian doctrine. But even more remarkable, the worst popes could do nothing to damage the teaching of the Church. That’s why, even in its darkest moments, the story of the papacy is a story of triumph. And that’s why it’s worth knowing these twelve popes.