Ambrogio Caiani, "Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation" (Apollo, 2026)

July 18, 2026

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In 1870, the Catholic Church lost its central Italian kingdom, and for the next fifty-nine years, the popes refused to appear in St. Peter’s Square, unwilling to look out on the country that had usurped their sovereignty. By the early twentieth century, the Holy See had diplomatic representation in only six European capitals. This was the embattled, isolated institution that would have to navigate the age of total war, fascism, and genocide—an institution that, as historian Ambrogio Caiani puts it, found it “next to impossible not to flirt with evil.”

The Church’s Vulnerable Position Before the World Wars

Caiani’s book, Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation, traces the political history of twentieth-century Catholicism from a starting point of institutional weakness. Under Pope Pius X (reigned 1903–1914), the Church faced a kind of “civil war” over modernism—the attempt to bring Catholic doctrine in line with modern historical and scientific methods. Pius X created a secret doctrinal office called the Sodalitium Pianum to hunt down modernists and required all clergy to take an anti-modernist oath. Externally, France severed diplomatic relations in 1905, Portugal followed in 1912, and even the Habsburg monarchy was eroding Church privileges. The Vatican was also locked in a hostile standoff with Italy, whose existence it refuse

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What you'll learn

1 Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation
2 (01:42) **Why This Book Exists** - Professor Caiani explains the opportunity created by Pope Francis opening the Vatican archives for Pius XII's reign, allowing a complete political history of 20th-century Catholicism
3 (02:53) **The Church's Weak Position in 1900** - The Vatican had lost its central Italian kingdom and was diplomatically isolated
4 (05:04) **Internal Crisis: The Anti-Modernist Campaign** - A "civil war" within the church over modernism
5 (06:26) **World War I: Problematic Neutrality** - Benedict XV faced accusations of pro-German bias despite humanitarian work
6 (10:22) **Initial Overtures to Bolshevik Russia** - The Vatican naively hoped the Bolshevik revolution might enable Catholic revival in the East
7 (12:22) **Versailles as Disaster** - The Vatican saw the peace treaties as creating a secular, atheistic Europe

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Show Notes

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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