On 28 February 2013, a 600-year-old tradition was shattered: Pope Benedict XVI made a startling announcement. He would resign. From the prize-winning screenwriter of The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour, The Pope is a fascinating, revealing and often funny tale of two very different men whose destinies converge with each other and the wider world. How did these two men become two of the most powerful people on Earth? What does the future hold for the Catholic Church? What is it like to be the Pope? The Pope is a dual biography that masterfully combines these two popes' lives into one gripping narrative. From Benedict and Francis' experiences of war in their homelands - when they were still Joseph and Jorge - and the Church's sexual abuse scandal that shocked the world, to the smoke signals announcing the election of a new pope failing and Benedict's robes being too small, The Pope glitters with the lighter and the darker details of life inside one of the world's most opaque but significant institutions.

This book offers an introduction to the theological and historical aspects of the papacy, an office and institution that is unique in this world. Throughout its history up to our present time, the Petrine ministry is both fascinating and challenging to people, both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Gerhard Cardinal Müller speaks from a particular and personal viewpoint, including his experience of working closely with the pope every day as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He addresses, in particular, those dimensions of the papal office which are crucial for understanding more deeply the pope as a visible principle of the church’s unity. 500 years after the Protestant reformation, the book offers insights into the ecumenical controversies about the papacy throughout the centuries, in their historical context. The book also exposes prejudices and cliches, and points to the authentic foundation of the Petrine ministry.

The compelling story of Pope Pius XI's secret relations with Benito Mussolini. A ground-breaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives by US National Book Award-finalist David Kertzer, it will forever change our understanding of the Vatican's role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.

On the Pope (Du Pape) is the main political-philosophical work of the counter-revolutionary writer and philosopher, Joseph de Maistre. Maistre worked for 20 years on the writing of his magnum opus, a book that laid the foundation for his invention of political ultramontanism. Ultramontanism was a school of thought of the Catholic Church that promoted the doctrine of central papal supremacy in matters of governance and spirituality. Championed by Pope Pius IX, the ultramontanists attained their greatest triumph in the late 19th century with the formal proclamation of papal primacy and infallibility. On the Pope is divided into four parts. In the first part, Maistre makes the argument for his thesis that there is "no pope without the supremacy which belongs to him" and "no Catholicism without one pope." His argument in favor of papal infallibility stands out in the history of theology because he was among the earliest Catholic writers to openly discuss the doctrine. Part two reveals the key components of Maistre's political thought: His absolutist ideas about the nature of sovereignty, his unique argument for the divine origins of all forms of political sovereignty, and his rejection of social contract theories on the origin of society and sovereignty. Part three is devoted to demonstrating Maistre's argument that, above all, nations need a higher sovereign to help protect against the abuses of power, and that this sovereign should be the pope, as the savior and creator of European civilization. He argues that the only nations that have known civil liberty are those which "have remained sufficiently under the influence of the Sovereign Pontiff." Part four deals primarily with "schismatic churches." Maistre felt that the schismatic churches would inevitably fall into Protestantism, and from Protestantism through Socinianism into philosophic indifference. For "no religion can resist science, except one."

Marcantonio Colonna's The Dictator Pope has rocked Rome and the entire Catholic Church with its portrait of an authoritarian, manipulative, and politically partisan pontiff. Occupying a privileged perch in Rome during the tumultuous first years of Francis’s pontificate, Colonna was privy to the shock, dismay, and even panic that the reckless new pope engendered in the Church’s most loyal and judicious leaders. The Dictator Pope discloses that Father Mario Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis) was so unsuited for ecclesiastical leadership that the head of his own Jesuit order tried to prevent his appointment as a bishop in Argentina. Behind the benign smile of the "people's pope" Colonna reveals a ruthless autocrat aggressively asserting the powers of the papacy in pursuit of a radical agenda.

Days after the assassination of his prime minister in the middle of Rome in November 1848, Pope Pius IX found himself a virtual prisoner in his own palace. The wave of revolution that had swept through Europe now seemed poised to put an end to the popes' thousand-year reign over the Papal States, if not indeed to the papacy itself. Disguising himself as a simple parish priest, Pius escaped through a back door. Climbing inside the Bavarian ambassador's carriage, he embarked on a journey into a fateful exile.Only two years earlier Pius's election had triggered a wave of optimism across Italy. After the repressive reign of the dour Pope Gregory XVI, Italians saw the youthful, benevolent new pope as the man who would at last bring the Papal States into modern times and help create a new, unified Italian nation. But Pius found himself caught between a desire to please his subjects and a fear--stoked by the cardinals--that heeding the people's pleas would destroy the church. The resulting drama--with a colorful cast of characters, from Louis Napoleon and his rabble-rousing cousin Charles Bonaparte to Garibaldi, Tocqueville, and Metternich--was rife with treachery, tragedy, and international power politics.David Kertzer is one of the world's foremost experts on the history of Italy and the Vatican, and has a rare ability to bring history vividly to life. With a combination of gripping, cinematic storytelling, and keen historical analysis rooted in an unprecedented richness of archival sources, The Pope Who Would Be King sheds fascinating new light on the end of rule by divine right in the west and the emergence of modern Europe.

From the moment he was elected into the papacy, Pope Francis has captured the attention of the world with his humility, charisma, and reformist spirit. This one-of-a-kind, illustrated biography of the first Jesuit pope offers more than 250 photographs and 50 removable documents from Francis's life. Written by Vatican Radio reporter Marie Duhamel, this intimate portrait includes his parents emigration from Italy, his birth as Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, his love of soccer and opera as a child, the pneumonia that nearly cost him his life as a young adult, his calling to the priesthood, and his first encounter with poverty as a missionary in Chile that would change his life. Duhamel chronicles Francis's rise from priest to bishop to cardinal to the papacy and how, along the way, he impressed many people-and alienated some-with his courage to stand up to authority and his dedication to helping the poor. Enclosed documents such as his baptism certificate, photographs from his childhood, pages from a school notebook, handwritten notes as pope, and even a support card for his beloved San Lorenzo soccer club, further illuminate his life and create a lasting keepsake of this pope of the people.