The Popes on Air: The History of Vatican Radio from Its Origins to World War II

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study on the history of Vatican Radio from its origins (1931) to the end of Pius XII’s pontificate (1958) based on unpublished sources.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 Milan. PhD in History of Christianity (2010- University of Padua), and PhD in Modern History (2016 - Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and École Pratique des Hautes Études). Her studies focus on forms of Catholic anti-Semitism and anti-Protestantism in the 20th century; the anti-Modernism of the Roman Curia under the pontificate of Pius X; Church and media; the diplomacy and politics of the Vatican during the Second World War. She is the author of Vatican Radio and Anti-Semitism during the Second World War, in ＂The Tragic Couple＂. Encounters Between Jews and Jesuits, ed. by J. Bernauer, R.A. Maryks, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2014, p. 247-267; Vatican Radio and Modern Propaganda. A Case Study, in The Papacy in the Contemporary Age, ed. by G. Vian, Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, Venice, 2018, p. 67-86; Vatican Radio and Modern Society. Catholic Women in the Broadcasts of the 1950s, in ＂Annali di scienze religiose＂, 2022, p. 19-45; Une diplomatie désarmée dans la Seconde Guerre mondiale: un bilan historiographique, in ＂Mondes＂, 2/2022, p. 35-56;the book La radio del papa. Propaganda e diplomazia nella seconda guerra mondiale, Bologna, il Mulino, 2017 (Ettore Gallo Prize 2020).