Caroline Kutzin’s Reviews > Intimate Strangers: A History of Jews and Catholics in the City of Rome > Status Update

I never thought about the role of the pope in WWII because I always conflated Vatican City with the rest of Italy - Nazi occupied/allied - but that really wasn’t the case. Hitler didn’t encroach on VC so Pius XII could have and should have taken a bolder position but was driven mostly by fears of Soviet Communism? Like man you couldn’t have said anything to rile up the German Catholics to resist this shit?

Mussolini was so two faced

Who knew that part of the Catholic church’s modern view of when life starts is related to the forced conversion of Jews in the 18th century??? Probably a lot of people but I didn’t!!

We’ve known this but money lending/handling by Christians/Catholics was illegal in ancient European countries- but exemptions (in the ways of decriminalizing the practice/not prosecuting offenders) were made for Jews because they were viewed as sort of dirty anyways and the papacy realized it was necessary for their society as the majority of recipients in Ancient Rome were Catholic merchants and farmers…

Some fun facts
- “renaissance Jew” Judah Romano can be credited for defining/writing the word pizza (Hebrew word “harara”, idk if that’s contemporary or not) as a focaccia cooked on coals (he was likely talking about flat bread pizza). So like we might not have had pizza without Jews if you think about it.
-Michelangelo made a statue of Moses with horns because of a mistranslation…loaded much?

When deciding what to read next I figured no day was better than the last real day of Passover, and Easter