The Popes on Air

The story of the origin of Vatican Radio provides a unique look at the history of World War II

The book offers the first wide-ranging study on the history of Vatican Radio from its origins (1931) to the end of Pius XII’s pontificate (1958) based on unpublished sources. The opening of the Secret Vatican Archives on the records regarding Pius XII will shed light on the most controversial pontificate of the 20th century. Moreover, the recent rearrangement of the Vatican media provided the creation of a multimedia archive that is still in Fieri.

This research is an original point of view on the most relevant questions concerning these decades: the relation of the Catholic Church with the Fascist regimes and Western democracies; the attitude toward anti-Semitism and the Shoah in Europe, and in general toward the total war; the relationship of the Holy See with the new media in the mass society; the questions arisen in the after-war period such as the Christian Democratic Party in Italy; the new role of women; and anti-communism and the competition for the consensus in the social and moral order in a secularized society.

Raffaella Perin is Associate Professor of History of Christianity at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan.Raffaella Perin is Associate Professor of History of Christianity at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan.

Perin’s book sheds important new light on how the controversial Pope Pius XII and the Vatican dealt with the challenges posed by the Second World War and the Holocaust. Vatican radio was a potentially precious source of news in Axis-occupied Europe, and a potent public platform for the Pope, yet he worried about broadcasts that might antagonize the Nazis and Fascists. The Popes on Air, for the first time, shows exactly how the Vatican made its way amidst these challenges.---David Kertzer, Pulitzer-prize-winning author of The Pope and Mussolini

Perin’s The Popes on Air: The History of Vatican Radio from Its Origins to World War II is a fascinating and historically nuanced study of Vatican Radio during WWII. The material in the book is largely based on archival research, some of which has only recently been made available to the public by the Vatican.---Melissa Dinsman. Assistant Professor of English at York College