What do you think?
Vatican Spies: From the Second World War to Pope Francis
"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 channeled 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 Benedict XVI and, today, Pope Francis.
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 channeled 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 Benedict XVI and, today, Pope Francis.
Audible Audio
First published December 5, 2024
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 20, 2025
Contrary to the other reviews of this book I thought this was solid in terms of information as well as entertainment. It’s true though that it doesn’t do a good job of introducing topics sometimes and large parts of the book are probably better enjoyed if you’ve already read books about similar topics or have at least wasted a good deal of time on Wikipedia prior.
I hope for a sequel to this book one day when I’m like 75 called Vatican Spies 2: 2 Vatican 2 Spy after some more files have been unredacted (the Benedict and onward chapters were disappointingly not as long as hoped for).
I hope for a sequel to this book one day when I’m like 75 called Vatican Spies 2: 2 Vatican 2 Spy after some more files have been unredacted (the Benedict and onward chapters were disappointingly not as long as hoped for).
April 5, 2025
Fascinating topic. Translation from French to English maybe misses some narrative and context.
March 30, 2025
DNF. This was so dense and pitifully organized, you could hardly keep up with what was going on. This should have been more focused geographically or on specific characters but instead it read like a deck of Wikipedia pages on similar topics that were randomly shuffled together.
July 26, 2026
Translated from the French, "Vatican Spies" is a difficult read. Unlike the catchy title and hype of "shadow wars" and "dirty tricks", it reads like an unwieldy combination of news summaries, book reports, and bureaucratic analyses.
Don't expect new revelations. The author seems embarrassed to dwell too long on sex scandals, and doesn't know enough to reveal the politics and secrets of key players from the KGB to Vatican Conclaves. It's usually not a book that dares to "name names" in a surprising way, and instead seems intent on naming as many names as possible. Those listening, as I did, to the Audible version will be impressed by the reader's linguistic skill in pronunciations. They seem credible, at least. Readers of phonebooks will delight. Some of those named worked for secretive orders and lay organizations, interesting subjects on their own, but the details never come together as depth. The style is declarative, and less than the promised "revelatory."
I don't envy the author the formidable task. Sources for the underlying material would challenge any investigative journalist fluent in less than a dozen languages. You'd certainly need a thorough read of Italian and French newspapers and tabloids, familiarity with The Mitrokhin archive of KGB revelations, and the tell-alls and bios of disgruntled spies, spymasters, and clergymen around, etc.
Even if the facts presented are mostly correct, I'm not sure the collection is complete enough to add a new page to history. Chapters take you through phases of history touched by seven sequential Popes. Pacelli (Piux XII) isn't trashed, his challenges and efforts seem told with balance, so that's a fresh start, at least. Roncalli is celebrated, as always by journalists. You'll probably learn more about Pope (Paul VI) Montini than you've read elsewhere, especially in the area of secret ops. Not much, though, about how his doctrinal stance (especially "Humane Vitae") diminished the numbers of his flock in the West. An intelligence service should assess how executive actions taken are received by the constituency. Personally, Paul VI is more or less outed, again, as previously reported in the French press. Elsewhere the book raises how accusations and intimations of same sex attraction are used by blackmailers, but "Vatican Spies" veers quickly away when its lane offers a turn-off into tabloid topicality.
The mystery of Pope Luciani's insta-demise remains a mystery, although there's just enough doubt cast on the conspiracy theories to make you think, "right, he just had a hidden medical problem, and maybe Lee Oswald really did act alone, too." Who knows, right?
Pope Karol Wojtyła, a/k/a Pope Saint John Paul II, get deservedly prolonged attention, but in a quirky and not entirely appreciative way. The author tries to make the killings of priests committed to the causes of violent Latin American revolutionaries somehow proximate to the Pope. While the brutality of some anti-Communist regimes is a hard fact, the Pope and his chief doctrinal ally Ratzinger only opposed communism itself, and the false notion of "liberation theology." The one section of the book where the author abandons a dispassionate tone is when he documents the fate of the priests who died for their voluntary political alliances with the Far Left. That had nothing to do with the Vatican! John Paul II made his great mark on history for peacefully doing his part to bring down the Soviet Empire. For balance on the stakes of the Cold War, maybe the author should have included 1997's "The Black Book of Communism" on his reading list.
Pope Wojtyła eventually gets the credit deserved for his major role in bringing down European communism. His networks in Eastern Europe funded and supported many avenues of opposition, from Masses for millions in Poland down to paying for videocassettes and underground presses. He worked directly with President Reagan, and the CIA under Bill Casey. "Vatican Spies" demonstrates a continuity between the anti-communism of earlier Popes and allies through the successes of Reagan's Catholics and Wojtyła's spiritual army. If the book would have focused on that era, and reached out for the crisp, elegant style of e.g., non-fiction espionage storyteller Ben Macintyre, you'd see five stars up top here instead of three. This is a very long way from that.
The final two papacies considered here, Ratzinger and Bergoglio, are superceded by events which they failed to control. Financial scandals are difficult enough to compress into tight journalism, all the worse when an author is an enthusiast for detail. The Vatican's banking scandals, internet leaks, personnel betrayals, mob ties, intimations of sexual blackmail, etc. repeat much news already reported. The Roman Curia's tendency to nurture and sustain all of these in the way of you'd expect of a large bureaucracy fills the book's chapters. Just imagine a "Deep State" as embedded as the one in Washington but with as many languages and agendas as the entire globe affords. Small wonder they had trouble keeping track of their own thieves and molesters. Add to that media observers cognizant that a significant part of our world's population drops to their knees and pays heed whenever this ancient monarchy speaks.
Shortly after the book's publication, the Vatican was handed over to the leadership of (drumroll ...) an American Boomer! And why not? Four Italians, a Pole, a German, and an Argentinan have had their shot, with mixed results. Let's see how our guy does! And if he needs a Doge to clean up the bureaucracy he won't need Elon, he can just appoint one in Venice.
Seriously, with Christianity so clearly divided on political and social issues, perhaps the best epilogue to this book would be a Pope who'd first and foremost clean house internally. Resolve the scandalous financial and moral improprieties, and their institutional causes. Blast a light of truth through the Vatican's centuries old opacity. Then, and only then, would the world and its media have any reason to listen to all the moral and (inexpert) economic opining that we've heard out of Rome for the last decade.
Don't expect new revelations. The author seems embarrassed to dwell too long on sex scandals, and doesn't know enough to reveal the politics and secrets of key players from the KGB to Vatican Conclaves. It's usually not a book that dares to "name names" in a surprising way, and instead seems intent on naming as many names as possible. Those listening, as I did, to the Audible version will be impressed by the reader's linguistic skill in pronunciations. They seem credible, at least. Readers of phonebooks will delight. Some of those named worked for secretive orders and lay organizations, interesting subjects on their own, but the details never come together as depth. The style is declarative, and less than the promised "revelatory."
I don't envy the author the formidable task. Sources for the underlying material would challenge any investigative journalist fluent in less than a dozen languages. You'd certainly need a thorough read of Italian and French newspapers and tabloids, familiarity with The Mitrokhin archive of KGB revelations, and the tell-alls and bios of disgruntled spies, spymasters, and clergymen around, etc.
Even if the facts presented are mostly correct, I'm not sure the collection is complete enough to add a new page to history. Chapters take you through phases of history touched by seven sequential Popes. Pacelli (Piux XII) isn't trashed, his challenges and efforts seem told with balance, so that's a fresh start, at least. Roncalli is celebrated, as always by journalists. You'll probably learn more about Pope (Paul VI) Montini than you've read elsewhere, especially in the area of secret ops. Not much, though, about how his doctrinal stance (especially "Humane Vitae") diminished the numbers of his flock in the West. An intelligence service should assess how executive actions taken are received by the constituency. Personally, Paul VI is more or less outed, again, as previously reported in the French press. Elsewhere the book raises how accusations and intimations of same sex attraction are used by blackmailers, but "Vatican Spies" veers quickly away when its lane offers a turn-off into tabloid topicality.
The mystery of Pope Luciani's insta-demise remains a mystery, although there's just enough doubt cast on the conspiracy theories to make you think, "right, he just had a hidden medical problem, and maybe Lee Oswald really did act alone, too." Who knows, right?
Pope Karol Wojtyła, a/k/a Pope Saint John Paul II, get deservedly prolonged attention, but in a quirky and not entirely appreciative way. The author tries to make the killings of priests committed to the causes of violent Latin American revolutionaries somehow proximate to the Pope. While the brutality of some anti-Communist regimes is a hard fact, the Pope and his chief doctrinal ally Ratzinger only opposed communism itself, and the false notion of "liberation theology." The one section of the book where the author abandons a dispassionate tone is when he documents the fate of the priests who died for their voluntary political alliances with the Far Left. That had nothing to do with the Vatican! John Paul II made his great mark on history for peacefully doing his part to bring down the Soviet Empire. For balance on the stakes of the Cold War, maybe the author should have included 1997's "The Black Book of Communism" on his reading list.
Pope Wojtyła eventually gets the credit deserved for his major role in bringing down European communism. His networks in Eastern Europe funded and supported many avenues of opposition, from Masses for millions in Poland down to paying for videocassettes and underground presses. He worked directly with President Reagan, and the CIA under Bill Casey. "Vatican Spies" demonstrates a continuity between the anti-communism of earlier Popes and allies through the successes of Reagan's Catholics and Wojtyła's spiritual army. If the book would have focused on that era, and reached out for the crisp, elegant style of e.g., non-fiction espionage storyteller Ben Macintyre, you'd see five stars up top here instead of three. This is a very long way from that.
The final two papacies considered here, Ratzinger and Bergoglio, are superceded by events which they failed to control. Financial scandals are difficult enough to compress into tight journalism, all the worse when an author is an enthusiast for detail. The Vatican's banking scandals, internet leaks, personnel betrayals, mob ties, intimations of sexual blackmail, etc. repeat much news already reported. The Roman Curia's tendency to nurture and sustain all of these in the way of you'd expect of a large bureaucracy fills the book's chapters. Just imagine a "Deep State" as embedded as the one in Washington but with as many languages and agendas as the entire globe affords. Small wonder they had trouble keeping track of their own thieves and molesters. Add to that media observers cognizant that a significant part of our world's population drops to their knees and pays heed whenever this ancient monarchy speaks.
Shortly after the book's publication, the Vatican was handed over to the leadership of (drumroll ...) an American Boomer! And why not? Four Italians, a Pole, a German, and an Argentinan have had their shot, with mixed results. Let's see how our guy does! And if he needs a Doge to clean up the bureaucracy he won't need Elon, he can just appoint one in Venice.
Seriously, with Christianity so clearly divided on political and social issues, perhaps the best epilogue to this book would be a Pope who'd first and foremost clean house internally. Resolve the scandalous financial and moral improprieties, and their institutional causes. Blast a light of truth through the Vatican's centuries old opacity. Then, and only then, would the world and its media have any reason to listen to all the moral and (inexpert) economic opining that we've heard out of Rome for the last decade.
January 15, 2026
There's a massive amount of information in this book about priests who acted as spies, as well as the actions of foreign intelligence agencies to infiltrate the papacy. However, the text is not well structured; the timeline bounces around, there are far too many characters to keep track of, and many of the stories do not actually involve spies (tending more toward juicy gossip tidbits). Overall, consider reading partway through it to gain an overview of the situation, but it may not be worth grinding through to the end.
July 31, 2025
DNF didn’t like the style of writing. I was hoping for a more storytelling writing style but instead it’s written more like a higher education textbook. Couldn’t keep track of all the Italian phrases and terms.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews