For Patrons only for 1 year:

We follow the tribulations of the Papacy through the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, as the Pope's loyal soldiers in the Jesuit order are expelled from Catholic states and empires, the Church comes under attack in the French Reovlution, and Napoleon takes the Pope prisoner. We then follow the Papacy's gradual recovery of prestige -- through the reactionary rigorism of Pius IX and the 1st Vatican Council; the creation of Catholic social teaching and the intervention of the Church in the class struggle between capital and labor under Leo XIII; and the dramatic reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. We consider the controversies and scandals of the modern church relating to fascism, the Nazi Holocaust, the Vatican Bank, and the suppression of Liberation Theology, and finally, examine the recent shakeup of the Vatican under Pope Francis, the momentous implications of the Synod on Synodality, and the clues presaging a new political assertiveness of the Church under the first American pope, Leo XIV.

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Image: American print showing Pope Pius IX presiding over the First Vatican Council in St. Peter's Basilica, 1869.

Correction: Banker Roberto Calvi was found dead hanging from Blackfriars Bridge, London, not London Bridge.