Vatican Spies

A Foreign Affairs 'Book of the Year' and an Independent 'Book of the Month'

‘Revelatory . . . There is much blood on the carpet.’ — The Observer

‘There is so much noir here it would have provided John le Carré with rich material for a lengthy second career, had he lived. … compulsive, quite literally, unputdownable.’ — The Irish Times

‘Officially’ the Vatican has no espionage service; but does no one carry out intelligence operations on its behalf? During the Second World War and Cold War, Rome was teeming with spies. A band of undercover monsignors and priests hunted for Vatican ‘moles’, led clandestine diplomacy, investigated assassinations of priests and other scandals threatening the Church, and conducted high-risk missions behind the Iron Curtain.

Drawing on freshly released archives of foreign services that worked with or against the Holy See, Vatican Spies reveals eighty years of shadow wars and dirty tricks. These include infiltrating Russian-speaking priests into the Soviet Union; secret negotiations between John XXIII and Khrushchev; the future Paul VI’s close relationship with the CIA; the Vatican’s infiltration by Eastern Bloc intelligence; the battles between the Jesuits and Opus Dei; and the secret bank funds channelled first to fight communism in South America, then to support Solidarity in Poland.

This entertaining book journeys right to the present, uncovering startling machinations under Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV.

• For anyone who enjoyed Conclave, this is an astonishing history of the priests and missionaries whose ‘special ops’ serve the Holy See and 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide.
• Explores the Vatican’s unofficial espionage service and its instrumental role on the world stage during the Second World War and the Cold War in particular.
• Taps into new international intelligence archives to investigate the Vatican’s longstanding global connections.