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Throughout the long nineteenth century, the Habsburg Monarchy was characterized by a steady discussion on nation building, national identities, and the national characterization of already existing or newly founded public and private institutions. Almost every political issue brought up in public was immediately after transformed into one of national concern. Today’s Roman Catholic Croatian Priest College in Rome whose beneficiaries stemmed entirely from among Habsburg citizens was no exception. When in 1901 this formerly Illyrian institution was to be transformed into an ethnic Croatian, this met not only with Austrian and Hungarian state interest and critic, but was also commented in the press Monarchy-wide even when the reformation plans were not exactly known. Unlike some other scholarly works, this chapter highlights the perspective of Habsburg state bureaucrats who challenged the papal reformation plans, as they feared that the new college would support Croatian nationalism within an institution which was under the patronage of Franz Joseph, and financially supported by Austrian ministries. Finally, this chapter shows how carefully state institutions had to manoeuvre through an issue which for a while seemed to affect the Habsburg relationship with the Holy See.

This chapter analyses the legal and canonical situation of the Romanian Byzantine Catholics in Hungary at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Being part of the Hungarian State, the Greek Catholic bishops were subjected to the Hungarian hierarchy, attending the congresses and conferences of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Hungary. In addition, they were loyal to the Holy See, favouring the Latinisation of the Church in the three provincial councils. Through this approach, they secured the support of the papacy in disputes with the Hungarian higher clergy. Thus, they were able to uphold the individuality of their own Romanian Church, by organising their own mixed archdiocesan church assemblies which, just like the Romanian Orthodox Church from Hungary, had the role of conducting educational and economic diocesan activities.

This chapter examines the Vatican’s Eastern policy from the perspectives of Brezhnev’s U.S.S.R.—a complex and often controversial system, in which various subjects influenced the formation of bilateral relations between the Soviet Union and the Vatican. Soviet agencies lacked a balanced or strategic policy line towards the Vatican. Moreover, this situation produced tense relations between various Soviet institutions, at times causing scandals on an international scale. An important role in the relationship with the Vatican was played by representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), yet due to the lack of a theological impulse towards the dialogue and the ROC’s subjugation to the state demands on the development of bilateral relations with influential religious organizations, we see numerous stumbling blocks and unresolved questions that allow us to find new perspectives of Soviet heritage in contemporary relations between the Vatican, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

In the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the “Biafran War,” captivity was an important issue of transnational dimensions. This chapter looks at the capture of Western oilmen, who worked for the Italian oil company Eni, by Biafran forces in 1969. Hereby, the main focus is on the ensuing negotiations for their release. Not only the Italian state was involved in the mediation efforts, but so, too, various other transnational actors such as the Western European Union, the Portuguese government, the presidents of Gabon and Ivory Coast, the Vatican and some international organisations. The oilmen’s eventual release was a huge success for the negotiators, but a defeat for Biafra, which had hoped to use the captives in order to strengthen its claims of sovereignty.

This essay is a critical appreciation of the scholarly work on Galileo’s trial by Mons. Sergio Pagano (Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives since 2007). Pagano has argued convincingly that the 1616 precept to Galileo by Inquisition commissary Seghizzi is authentic and not a forgery. This is an important accomplishment because it settles a controversy that has raged since the 1860’s, with wide-ranging cultural repercussions. However, the precept’s documentary authenticity does not prove its factual accuracy, nor its juridical legitimacy. Indeed, it can be shown that the precept was illegitimate, because it contradicts Pope Paul V’s orders and cardinal-inquisitor Robert Bellarmine’s testimony. Pagano apparently conflates, and equivocates among, these three concepts, as well as among the contents of four distinct orders to Galileo regarding Copernicanism: Pope Paul’s orders not to believe and not to discuss, Bellarmine’s warning not to hold or defend as true or as biblically compatible, and Seghizzi’s precept not to hold or teach in any way.

In 1870, Franz Brentano withdrew to the Benedictine monastery at Andechs in Bavaria to re-evaluate his continued commitment to the priesthood. The Vatican Council had just promulgated the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, and Brentano was now confronted with a clear instance in which his Church—no matter how much they might deny it—had altered its position on a point of instruction fundamental to the faith. As a result, Brentano now considered himself permitted, and even obligated, to undertake a careful review of other doctrines, subjecting them to a new level of scrutiny. Up to this point, he had resisted such scrutiny because, as he himself puts it in the preface to this volume, “faith was presented to me as a sacred obligation, whose violation entailed eternal damnation.” If, however, the Church could now be shown to have compromised its teaching authority by contradicting itself on a point of dogma, then it was impossible that sustained critical scrutiny “could…be construed as a crime.” Nor could “a propensity towards having doubts [be] construed as a dangerous temptation.” He thus undertook a careful review of doctrines that he suspected of being untenable.

The document titled “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” signed in Abu Dhabi in February 2019 by Pope Francis and Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyib from al-Azhar (Cairo—Egypt), represented an absolute novelty in the two-millennia-long history of the Church. For the first time, in fact, a pope decided to issue a common official document along with a religious leader of another tradition. The event is truly significant and needs to be read in retrospect, appreciating the decisive and progressive steps the Catholic Church has taken starting from the Vatican Council. The publication of Nostra Aetate (1965), along the lines given by Ecclesiam Suam, the first Encyclical Letter by Paul VI, inspired a process for Catholics to open up toward faithful of other religions. This text proposes an analysis of this evolution, which has been a source of inspiration for significant changes within the Catholic Church.

John Paul II’s first papal visit to his home country in 1979 is considered a key event that contributed to the decline and fall of communism. Drawing on Polish and international sources, this chapter shows how the Vatican negotiated in advance with the Polish government to determine the pope’s itinerary and aspects of the visit’s media coverage. While the Polish government made numerous concessions in order to garner prestige, it also sought to maintain control of the visit and its interpretation. However, the pope’s appearances at various locations around the country, which were attended by some 10 million people, ultimately engendered a shared identity that acted as a countermodel to socialism. As indicated by internal government surveys, the visit also promoted religiousness in Poland and was a catalyst to the future protest movement.

This chapter describes the genesis, scope and content of the Lateran Treaty (1929) and its revision (1984), showing that this international deal became a “win-win” and durable long-term agreement (LTA) in which the Italian State and the Holy See of Rome composed, starting from different perspectives, both juridical and economical questions: those matters concerned not only the Catholic’s condition in a modern context but also the mutual relationships among two different, and autonomous, states established at different layers in one territory. The Lateran Treaty settled almost 50 years of debating the “Questione Romana”, arisen since the end of Papal States in 1870, giving shape to a modern weltanschauung described as “Libero Stato in libera Chiesa”, meaning “freedom for both states”; this innovative approach survived not only when Italy became a modern Republic in 1947 but, as well afterwards, facing today’s society debates like wedding and divorce, fiscal exemptions for religion’s purposes through the 1984 revision, it lasts until today. Lots of experience can be achieved by analysing this agreement in a long-term context, not only for understanding the art of negotiation in the religion’s field, and the unique position, in a worldwide context, of the city of Rome, but also for individual entities aiming at developing durable and strong relationships, e.g. in, but not limited to, government-to-government (G2G) sector. Thus, also aiming at understanding that, at that time, the millennial Papal States had surely more power than the young Italian State.

Being the cradle of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the Middle East constitutes a pivotal but highly contested region for the papacy. Despite the disadvantage of representing only a rather weak fraction of the three Abrahamic religions in the region, the popes managed to become a public and political player in the Middle East. The argument presented in this chapter is that papal power in the Middle East is based on a long-lasting, sometimes attractive vision of an Abrahamic Middle East in which the three religions live side by side in an interreligious public of peaceful coexistence. Based on Paul VI’s first journey to the Holy Land, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis worked towards that aim with different approaches, but all chose travelling as their prime instrument.

In 1929, Charles Upson Clark (1875–1960), a history Professor at Columbia University, carrying out bibliographic research for the Smithsonian Institution on the early history of the Americas in the Vatican Library, came across a remarkable illustrated Latin manuscript from 1552 entitled Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis (Little Book of Indian Medicinal Herbs). In the same year, Lynn Thorndike, Columbia Professor of Medieval Science and Alchemy, noted its existence in Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s catalogue of Vatican manuscripts, and Giuseppe Gabrielli (1872–1942), librarian at the Royal Academy of the Lincei, published a note on the Windsor copy. The 1552 manuscript, now generally referred to as the Codex Cruz-Badianus, was a revelation, spreading new light on botanical and medicinal knowledge of the indigenous peoples of Mexico known today as Nahuans or Aztecs. It was to have a major impact on the history of Aztec culture in sixteenth-century New Spain.

Although the Spanish population actually supports sexual-rights policies, the Roman Catholic Church, right-wing parties, and anti-gender groups have been lobbying and marching against same-sex marriage laws and antidiscrimination policies since 2004. Several repertoires of contention have been employed under the ideological framework of the Vatican’s gender doctrine and, at the same time, as an expression of the new tendencies of postsecularism about religious citizenship, also inspired by the Vatican’s promotion of the so-called “New Evangelization.” This chapter explores the actors, strategies, and discourses of Catholic activists in Spain. Having first sketched the historical context of Spain, the chapter explores the religious and secular repertoires of mobilization developed by several Catholic activist groups over the last one and half a decades—from demonstrations and social media campaigns to complaints in court and international conferences—as well as the adoption of a new doctrinal language to blur the private–public boundaries in political debates.

The establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Holy See under the Reagan administration and the pontificate of John Paul II in 1984 took place during a dramatic last phase of the Cold War. Speculations that these circumstances indicated a full-fledged strategic alliance of the president and the pope against Communism are proven to be an exaggeration. However, a thorough analysis of relevant White House papers and interviews with leading protagonists from the U.S. and the Holy See shows that the rapprochement was organized by a U.S. administration of which key members were statesmen with worldviews strongly shaped by their faith. Anticipating the collapse of the communist bloc, they established a confidential collaboration that was strong enough to shape world politics—and to overcome the domestic obstacles that had prevented U.S. Presidents from establishing full diplomatic relations with the Holy See for more than 100 years.

The chapter shows how actors who are religious as well as political, public as well as international, pursue a transnational foreign policy, address a global public and thus participate in creating a transnational society. To understand such actors, the term ‘hybrid actor’ is introduced. Embedded in the theoretical framework of the English School, the term improves the understanding of how such actors link the international system with a transnational or global public. By examining the dyad between the Holy See and Iran, the chapter focuses on two striking but different examples of hybrid actors. The dyad’s double social practices of diplomatic communication and inter-religious dialogue are subsequently interpreted as manifestations of the links between international society and a transnational or world society.

This chapter considers the second phase of the Irish missionary activity in the West Indies. It demonstrates that the resumption of the missionary activities—interrupted in the late 1630s—was a direct consequence of the growing number of Irish people who—freely or forcibly—arrived in that area during the 1650s and early 1660s. This chapter once again stresses how the highest authorities of the Holy See and the personnel of the two Irish Colleges in Rome remained detached from the efforts made by the Irish missionaries in the West Indies.

This chapter explores the harsh context found by the first Irish clerics who arrived in Rome during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. It explores how and to which extent the Irish clerics sought to overcome the lack of papal support and the absence of dedicated structures, and how the “inattention” from the Holy See markedly contrasted with the system of patronage developed by the Spanish monarchy. The chapter also investigates how the lack of support from the Papal Curia had a detrimental effect on the possibilities to establish a steady missionary channel between Rome and Ireland.

Libellus de medicinalibus Indorum herbis (Codex Cruz-Badianus) of 1552 is surely one of the most amazing botanical documents of the sixteenth century. Its history is legendary. It was written in Nahuatl by Martin de la Cruz (Silvermoon 2007:209), an indigenous Nahua (Aztec) physician at the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco and translated to Latin by Juan Badiano, an indigenous faculty member and former student. The illustrated Latin volume was sent as a gift to King Carlos I of Spain and ended up in obscurity in the Vatican library until it was rediscovered in 1929 by Charles Upson Clark, professor of history at Columbia University. The Latin version was independently translated into English by William Gates and Emily Walcott Emmart, both associated with Johns Hopkins University. The Codex Cruz-Badianus never received the attention it deserved despite its importance in understanding Aztec medicine and botany and the history of the colonial period in New Spain. As Bruce Bylund (2000) points out: “Several facsimiles and a handful of analytical studies exist, but not nearly as many as would be expected to have come from the earliest complete medical texts in the New World.”

Within IR thinking, secular nation states dominate the scene. Transformations that make the boundaries between international diplomacy and transnational publics fuzzy are usually presented as having emerged only recently. The role of religion in world affairs is thus often conceptualized as a surprising return. The continuity of papal involvement, however, shows that the interconnectedness of the Public and the International stood the test of time. Based on a postsecular perspective and illustrated by a walk with the popes through Paris, the introduction bridges the modern secular gap between a medieval past and a possible neomedieval future by showing that the popes were always part of the game, both on the international and on the public level. Their understanding of religion as a critical force, that binds the International back to the Public never ceased to have an impact on politics.

Religious leaders can act as norm-builders in global policymaking due to their prominence in civil society and their access to social capital. This role is reflected in the preamble to the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which is unique in acknowledging religious leaders in its preamble. The authors argue while the role of religion in international diplomacy is often ignored, the formal recognition of the role of religion in the TPNW reflects a long and ongoing history of faith-based action on nuclear disarmament. The chapter focuses on the role of religious groups in the TPNW’s negotiations, including advocacy with the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and the diplomatic efforts of the Holy See.

Dwingeloo, ESO, the Vatican and the Cross-Antenna The Kootwijk telescope has spectacularly shown the potential of radio astronomy. Oort set out to find funding for a 25-meter radio telescope, as he had originally suggested. Now that the 21-cm line had been discovered the funding was approved and the telescope was inaugurated in 1956. A visit of German-born Walter Baade from the Mount Wilson Observatory resulted in a plan for a major optical telescope in the southern hemisphere to be built by a consortium of European countries. After having overcome many obstacles the convention was signed by six countries in 1962. The Leiden southern station in South-Africa was closed due to light from nearby Johannesburg and moved to Hartebeespoort Dam and a new telescope, the Lightcollector, for stellar photometry was taken into operation. Oort was a major force behind the Vatican Study Week on Stellar Populations in 1957. As soon as Dwingeloo was operational Oort started planning for a larger radio telescope in the form of the Benelux Cross Antenna Project. In the mean time dynamical studies continued and the long time efforts to write a book about dynamics resulted in a chapter in a major compendium.

This chapter examines what was possibly the last of the Nazi bureaucracy’s vertical trust networks—ODESSA. This was purported to be a covert organization of the SS underground that was established toward the end of World War II and whose primary mission was to facilitate the escape of SS members and other highly placed Nazi affiliates from post-war Europe to mainly Brazil and other Nazi-sympathizing parts of South America. This process possibly involved two competing vertical trust networks, both headed by Heinrich Himmler, and a number of suspected affiliate organizations, including the Vatican, Juan Peron’s government in Brazil, Francisco Franco’s government in Spain, and various German industrial and financial magnates. Nazi functionaries who were rescued through this process included Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Mengele.

The chapter is concerned with the international treaties and agreements related to the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery and with the juridical abolitions of internal slavery in the pre-unitarian Italian states. Both types of abolitions were often imposed by two main external powers, France and Great Britain. Different geographical areas were subjected to difference diplomatic influences. I highlight the contradiction between a campaign against the Atlantic slave trade and, tangentially, Mediterranean slavery, and the persistence of slavery in most of the Italian states, in particular in the Papal States. Pope Gregory XVI promulgated the apostolic letter In supremo apostolatus (1839), and the Holy See was also involved in this “Italian campaign” against the slave trade. I also analyse the abolitionist debate in the wider Italian context, discussing the abolitionist argument against the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as it was presented in Italian newspapers, annals and books; particular attention is dedicated to an analysis of articles from the Florentine newspaper Antologia, which was edited by Vieusseux. These analyses provide concrete evidence of the participation of Italian abolitionists in European intellectual networks.

In the nineteenth century Ireland was affected by a massive emigration. This mass-scale emigration was not unnoticed by the Holy See. Indeed with the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 the Roman authorities received a growing number of letters, petitions, and reports from the members of the Irish Catholic clergy who operated among their fellow countrymen in Canada and the United States. This essay will focus on how and to what extent the Holy See reacted to this dramatic phenomenon, and how it sought to provide assistance to the Irish Catholics in North America.

Two factors made the Irish in early modern Spanish America less visible than in the case of the French and English settlements: the Patronato Regio which was the privilege granted to the Spanish kings to administer the Catholic Church in Central and South America, and the fact that the research of the Irish migration focused first on the Anglophone and Francophone colonial spaces in America. It is only recently that the study of the Irish in the Iberian Atlantic has developed through the analysis of a combination of Spanish and Roman sources. This chapter will seek to reveal the networks which the Irish Catholics in the Iberian Atlantic established with the Holy See through the intermediation of the Spanish court. In doing so, it adopts an entangled and de-centred approach that helps to explain the slow learning process and building up of the global Irish Catholicism.

French ambassadors to the Holy See were known for their extensive use of festive events as occasions to promote the grandeur of their country. The polycentric system of the Roman court forced ambassadors to offer festive events for a use that could be appreciated by different audiences, including different social classes. Each of these areas of celebration—religious, political, popular—provided a musical accompaniment directed to that specific cultural context; obviously, the fate of these musical accompaniments was different: the music composed for political purposes spread immediately throughout Europe due to the extensive network of European diplomats, whose role was comparable to that of a cultural broker who contributed to the diffusion of Roman musical style. Through the examples of two feste organized by French ambassadors in Rome in 1747 and 1782 and through the study of related diplomatic correspondence, this chapter aspires to analyze the role of the diplomatic network in the circulation of festive and musical models from Rome to the other European courts. At first I formalize the model of circulation in three steps—from the French court to Rome and then from Rome to the other European courts; secondly, I define the role of the ambassador compared with his related king, on the one hand, and with the artists involved, on the other hand.

Controversy still swirls around Pope Pius XII’s general silence regarding the Holocaust. Given the Vatican’s ambiguity, the Catholic clergy divided between obedience to the Salo government and support of the partisans. The Church supported the regime against atheistic Communism, the all-important Cardinal Schuster of Milan was hardly a fan of the worst features of Fascism, and the anti-Semite Diego Don Calcagno, editor of the journal Crociata Italica (Italic Crusade), exercised a baleful influence throughout the RSI.

The Vatican Observatory exists to show the world that the Church supports science, and indeed that one can find God in all things, on Earth and in the heavens. Popularizing our science is just as important as writing a scientific paper. However, speaking to the press requires a special set of skills. This chapter presents a set of useful rules and principles for Vatican astronomers who interact with journalists.

This chapter addresses the way in which Dutch Franciscan friars responded to the “signs of the times,” as mentioned in the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (GS 4), in Papua. In terms of Franciscan spirituality, what was God saying to them about how they should continue the mission of Jesus and follow the Gospel? How did they experience “being church” within the changing context of daily living? Because theology in the church in Papua arose more from grassroots activities than from academic settings, the author’s reflections focus on events on the ground, on renewal from the grassroots.

This chapter discusses the opening to the world in the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. The approach of Gaudium et Spes differs from the earlier method of Catholic social teaching, which employed primarily a natural law approach. Gaudium et Spes introduces a more biblical, faith-centered, Christological approach to life in the world. In discussing the document itself, some of the problems in the document are also mentioned, especially its overly optimistic approach and its somewhat one-sided anthropological outlook. The discussion also points out the many subsequent developments building on Gaudium et Spes that occurred later, including the greater emphasis on the particular as illustrated in liberation and feminist theologies, the preferential option for the poor, and the importance of historical consciousness and the resultant pluralism in Catholic approaches to life in the world. The chapter develops by considering three significant methodological issues—a more theological approach to life in the world, a more personalist approach, and a more inductive approach.

Italy was a crucial battleground for the teaching of the Catholic church on sexual morality in the late 1960s, and Humanae Vitae had a key role in the development of a new kind of relationship between the Vatican, the Catholic Church in Italy, and Italian public opinion, both Catholic and secular. The chapter analyses a spectrum of reactions, from opinion pieces and letters in secular newspapers, theological explorations in Catholic journals, and published critiques of the encyclical by the Catholic faithful. The encyclical constituted a pivotal moment in perceptions of the secularization of Italy, and this event was particularly momentous in a country with a history so intimately tied to the Catholic Church and the Vatican.

This is a pope I want to agree with. He behaves and writes empathetically and behaves with what seems like huge care and humility, which goes a long way. Within the confines of Catholic theology, he comes across as a reformer, perhaps even a radical, disavowing the pomp of the Vatican and, from the outside at least, trying to build bridges with those who may have felt alienated from the church in preceding years.

In his 1874 pamphlet The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation, Gladstone took critical aim at Pope Pius IX and the papal decree of infallibility. He declared it a dangerous innovation that subordinated Catholics in England to the dictates of the pope in matters of civic loyalty as well as faith and morals. The controversy also drew in famed converts to Catholics Bishop Henry Manning and Cardinal Newman. Peterson examines how Gladstone’s reputation as a champion of liberty continued to advance, except among Roman Catholics, who published withering criticisms of the pamphlet. With a few exceptions, American Protestant and secular papers largely agreed with Gladstone’s warning. His pamphlet was considered a credible and necessary call for lovers of liberty.

The Vatican Observatory is a unique research institute. The Catholic Church has always been aware of the importance of astronomy in human culture and has embraced, encouraged and promoted it. The Vatican Observatory is a concrete sign of that commitment.

This book examines both the evolution of the Catholic vote in the US and the role of Catholic voters in the historic 2016 elections. There is a paucity of academic works on Catholics and US politics—scholars of religion and US politics tend to focus on evangelical Protestant voters—even though Catholics are widely considered the swing vote in national elections. The 2016 presidential election proves that the swing vote component of that group matters in close elections. What Trump gained from his impressive showing among Catholics, he could certainly lose in 2020 (should he seek re-election), just as Hillary Clinton lost the clear advantage among Catholics achieved by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. The book begins by analyzing the ideological patterns in the politics of U.S. Catholics as well as key alliances, and concludes by studying the political influences of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Holy See

In June 2015, the Vatican released Laudato Si’, the first papal encyclical focused on environmental issues. Then, in a speech during the United Nations’ (UN’s) Seventieth Anniversary Celebration in September 2015, the pope warned against “a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity.” He went on to proclaim that “Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity.” The timings of these developments are significant as both were ahead of the September 2015 adoption of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the December 2015 Climate Conference in Paris. This chapter examines Pope Francis as a policy entrepreneur whose language and timing both influences the framing of the climate change debate and creates moral implications surrounding environmental neglect. Building on work from social movement theory, the chapter provides an analysis on the confluence of Pope Francis’s ethical framework and his policy activism. Pope Francis’s engagement with the UN system is presented as a case study. Overall, the chapter examines the impact of the “Francis Factor” on discourse, public opinion, and global policy formation surrounding climate change.

Poland is often depicted as the archetypal Catholic country, and Polish Catholicism is frequently presented as conservative and homogeneous. This chapter seeks to destabilize this image, focusing on debates and practices related to birth control that show that Catholics throughout the country have adopted a variety of approaches to contraception. It opens with a close examination of debates over marriage and contraceptives in the 1960s in The Bond, a progressive Catholic monthly, while also excavating the legacy of Bishop Wojtyla (the future Pope John Paul II) in the articulation of an anti-contraception stance nationally and, most influentially, in the Vatican. It also discusses the social consequences of Humanae Vitae, excavating statistical data on religiosity alongside the near-universal usage of birth control methods today.

This contribution examines how the politics of the Catholic church in the Netherlands during the 1960s were a product of growing tensions between national and international concerns and the various ways in which debates on contraception and church politics became increasingly intertwined. After the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, Dutch Catholicism continued its embrace of a reform-minded and sociologically informed post-conciliar theology, driven by a national understanding and experience of sexual ‘modernity’ that many held to be incompatible with the views of the Holy See. In the early 1970s, Pope Paul VI and his curia appointed two rather traditional bishops to halt what was deemed a runaway church province.

The Vatican Observatory today hosts approximately 1200 meteorite specimens of all major meteorite types from around the world. The collection originated in a series of donations from Adrien Charles Marquis de Maurois, with the majority of specimens donated after his death by his widow in 1935. The collection has grown slowly since then, primarily through trades and donations. The collection boasts a number of historically and scientifically significant specimens, including a piece of the Martian meteorite Nakhla that has been handled by popes. The collection has been used for research in various forms since its early days. In the 1930s, it served as an early test bed for spectroscopic studies with the intention of comparison with asteroid spectra. In the 1990s, the collection served as a proving ground for pioneering work on meteorite porosity measurement using ideal-gas pycnometry and glass-bead immersion, which has become a widely adopted technique. In this past decade, it again served as a proving ground for new techniques; this time for whole-stone low-temperature heat capacity measurement by liquid nitrogen immersion.

The Vatican’s most tenacious problem in Asia remains the reconciliation of the Greater Chinese Catholic Church, whose Mainland Catholic communities are disconnected from the Holy See and the Catholic communities in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao. From the Vatican viewpoint, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the core problem as it has assumed hegemonic control over society and severed links with the universal Church. While John Paul II initiated reconciliation in the early 1980s, Pope Francis started the newest phase in March 2013. By February 2017, both sides reached a preliminary consensus to end the division between the official and unofficial Chinese Catholic communities. To achieve reconciliation, Pope Francis has adopted an inculturation strategy that builds upon shared cultural values, an accommodation strategy that cooperates with but does not serve the party-state, and an implementation strategy that relies on consultation and papal authority.