Chuck has been sent to Vatican city to witness and photograph the election of the new pope. He watches as politics shape the church, then is called to the White House where he meets President Carter and is witness to national crises. However, the national and worldwide events pale compared to the desolation that is in Chuck's heart. A thriving career and beautiful wife just are not enough to satisfy him. Divine intervention alone will restore his joy.

**** Lovingly told, this story will enchant readers familiar with the series, but new readers will most likely be a bit lost. However, new or old, you can not miss or fail to be charmed by Father Greeley's warm writing style that plays out events casually, but still has a profound message. Particularly engaging is the way he has divine figures show up in such a friendly manner.

Chucky, a professional photographer and former ambassador, soon regains much of his sixties and early seventies fervor that put him at odds with presidents. He and Rosemary try to dislodge a church protected pediophile priest. That fails because Cardinal Archbishop Thomas John O'Neill is psychotic and paranoid especially when it comes to protecting one of his own. Chuck and Rosemary have a cause to remove both abominations even as a personal miracle that has not happened to this couple in two decades occurs.

The sixth O'Malley chronicle is an insightful look at the Carter Administration through the eyes of Chucky and Rosemary, alternating chapters. The story line provides a vivid scrutiny while insuring the lead couple feels complete. Chucky suffers from a mid life crisis as he begins to question all he once believed in while Rosemary encourages him to gracefully continue the fight for what both know is right. Andrew Greeley furnishes a delightful charmer that displays how the late 1970s, only twenty-five years ago, feel today like ancient history even to one who lived through it.

Harriet Klausner

This is quite an extraordinary work. It seeks to correct the impression, held by Allen Dulles, many world leaders, and myself, that the Vatican, as with other select religious organizations like B'Nai Brith, is a world-class intelligence network.

Although the book spends as much time discussing efforts by the Italians, Germans, and others to penetrate the Vatican, as it does discussing the Vatican's mixed and often non-existent intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities, on balance this is an extremely good personal effort, based on some unique documents and research, and it can be regarded as a cornerstone for any future research into Vatican intelligence.

The book suggested to me three "big" ideas that need to be considered by every national intelligence service:

1) Structure and capabilties are needed to study religious intelligence and counterintelligence. Renegade mid-level drop-outs from the specified religious order should be identified and leveraged as required. Taking the Muslim brotherhood as an example (see Robert Baer's new book, SLEEPING WITH THE DEVIL), it is absolutely unforgivable and unprofessional of both the US Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency to have been prevented from studying the fundementalist and extremist religious movements in Arabia from the 1970's forward. Bottom line: we need to have relgious "orders of battle" and a clear understanding of what this important international player has in the way of capabilities and perceptions.

2) Secure communications make a very important contribution to candor and accuracy. Perhaps the most interesting part of the author's story can be found in his many annecdotes about how lack of a secure communications system led to self-deception, fantasy, conspiracy, and inaccuracy. The author is also quite credible in discussing the mediocrity of most Papal cryptographic systems, the lack of manpower and resources for improving this, and the negative results that came about because of a lack of a reliable and truly trusted communications system.

3)Finally, while the author does not cover Vatican betrayals of its own people through the Inquisition, of Muslims through the Crusades, and of Jews during the Holocaust, it is clear from this book that for all its limitations, the Catholic Church is an important global player whose local nuncios and bishops and priests and lay personnel can and should be legally and ethically leveraged for sounder understandings across many cultural divides. I would go so far as to resurface Richard Falk's 1970's idea about a world council of peoples and religions, with a twist: each Foreign Ministry must establish a separate Bureau of Religious Understanding, and devote considerable resources to studying and interacting with religious organizations (and cults, although these can be dealt with on a confrontational law enforcement basis).

Religons are one of the seven tribes of intelligence (the others are national, military, law enforcement, business, academic, and NGO-media). The author has made a very important contribution here (albeit with no help from the publisher--the index *stinks*). This book is highly recommended for adult students of intelligence, for policy makers, for religous leaders, and for citizens interested in how their religious affiliation could be legally employed (or illegally abused) in the pursuit of a global information society.

Alvarez has done yeoman work in sifting through mountains of material, and I congratulate his effort. For all interested in understanding how wrong Stalin was when he asked "How many legions has the Pope?", read Spies in the Vaticam. One may be surprised.

Occasional factual errors disfigure the text. The authors misdate by six years America's diplomatic recognition of the USSR; while Admiral Horthy, here described as Lutheran, was actually (like most Hungarian Protestants) Calvinist. A second edition, though, can repair these mistakes; and a second edition there should certainly be. Of The Vatican and the Red Flag, as of precious little other modern historiography, it can be said: read it, or risk being exposed as forever unfit to discourse upon its subject.

the authors describe the vatican approach to the "struggling church" in eastern europe. what was meant to happen versus what actually happened. the church's diplomats are seen to be naive at best in dealing with the communists. proves the point that divine intervention supported the church behind the iron curtain.

the tremendous rebuilding job for the newly freed churches is identified, and the diecrete steps taken so far are analyzed. the role of the current pope's philosophy and apologetics as the backbone of resistance to the communist onslaught is woven throughout the book.

probably as good as a recap of this struggle as we will see in the next several years. luxmoore is a long time observer of the catholic church in eastern europe for the tablet out of london.

i bought this book as i had nothing to do whilst waiting for a bus, within the first few pages i was hooked. Udo's deranged vision left me speechless, i kept thinking "can this be genuine?" if you think you've read every type of book and haven't tried this yet then you'r just wrong. read this book if you want to see how the written word can be used as a blunt instrument to batter you into a daze and destroy you're cozy image of the litereray world. it proves that the written word is still the most powerful communications medium ever, freaks and misfits, this is a light in the dark.

This is only the tip of the iceberg here. The book goes on for 568 pages, and most of that takes place in Rome, where the academic plays detective, assisted by a (beautiful, of course) female scientist. They're looking for an anti-matter bomb someone has hidden on the grounds of the Vatican, and also for some cardinals who have been kidnapped on the eve of the conclave, which will elect the new Pope. The whole thing takes place over the course of an evening.

There are gun battles, torture, betrayals, bizarre symbology (including ambigrams, which read the same right side up and upside down), and a great deal clues following various Roman art and religious artifacts. All of this is sewn together relatively seamlessly by Brown, but after a while it does get to be a bit much. And if you're like me, you will guess the ending about 50 or 100 pages before the main characters do. Given how the novel goes, it does take a while to finish.

However, I will say that I enjoyed it, and recommend it, given that you can accept the over the top nature of the plot.

Malachi Martin eloquently captures the wrestlings of the human heart over the grappling issues that face a faithful saint when confronted with these paradoxes of Satanic allegiance within the highest ranks of the church (and certainly the phenomenon is not unique to the Catholics).

A riveting plot. I read it in a week -- could hardly put it down.

Windswept House focuses on the Catholic Church. The mighty Vatican has been rendered impotent by infiltrators who embark on a spying venture as well as a search and destroy mission. In the process, they successfully isolate and denigrate opponents. In some cases, the shadow of assasination lurks as a termination tool.

Father Martin witnessed the opening salvo of the One World group as they attacked the Catholic Church hierarchs. In short, he was a fact witness. His work of "Faction", Windswept House, is acknowedged to be at least 85-90% fact presented in fictional form. It appears that world-wide Godless Socialism and Nihilism are winning the race for world dominion.

Reading this book is like watching a tidal wave as it heads our way, devouring all life in its path. There is no doubt as to who will be the coming victims - it is us. Those who believe that we won the Cold War, and have chosen to replace dogmatically held beliefs with situational ethics, should read both Windswept House and the Keys of This Blood.

David Yallop apparently did a lot of good reaseach for this book, and he gives a good outline of Luciani's life and family history, from his youth in Forno Di Canale to his seminary studies and thesis to his days as bishop of Vittorio Veneto and Patriach of Venice. He is extremely impressive in his outlining of the problems faced by a wealthy Church - especially in the way it contradicts Jesus' teachings in the Gospels - and its history from the days when Mussolini singed the Lateran Treaty. The Lateran treaty gave enormous amounts of money to the Vatican, which it invested through Bernadino Nogara in many large corporations. We see how Nogara bought shares in companies that manufactured goods inconsistent with Catholic teaching - his investments were free of doctrinal considerations.

After Nogara's death in 1958, the Vatican began to have financial troubles due to the cost of Vatican II. Though Yallop revealed little about the following period, he is most effective in showing how clearly the Vatican, in an effort to evade taxes, forged links with such notorious con men as Roberto Calvi and Michele Sindona, who, after Paul Marcinkus became head of the "Vatican Bank", took control of Vatican finances.

This was, as Yallop points out, a disaster because huge sums of money was lost by the Vatican due to a series of scandals aimed at taking money to offshore tax havens. Pope Paul VI might have had dreams of becoming "the first poor Pope in modern times", but such dreams were clearly fabled in the circumstances. There were many links between these criminals and the corrput P2 masonic lodge led by Licio Gelli, who is supposed to have decided to murder the Pope after he wished to reveal the list of Masons in important positions in the Vatican. The whole chain revealed brilliantly by Yallop confirms the Vaticans involvement in organised crime through the "Vatican Bank".

Albino Luciani was shown excellently to be a honest and incorruptible man who believed that the Church could not be rich if it wished to conform with the teachings of Jesus. This is why Luciani wanted to clean up the Vatican Bank and remove Calvi, Sindona and Marcinkus from it. This seemed a simple and logical decision given that the Vatican was suffering from financial problems by that point.

However, Yallop brutally points out that it was not difficult for those involved with P2 to enter the Vatican and poison the Pope without giving a visible residue - thus the conclusion that he had died of heart failure. Yallop, however, clearly and simply points out that with Luciani's lifestyle he was not likely to suffer from heart failure - he ate a healthy diet and he suffered from low blood pressure.

Thus, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Luciani was in fact murdered, though there are so many sources apparently concerning this question that it is difficult to tell, and other sources make dubious claims Luciani would have "disowned" Humanae Vitae.

This book should be read by anybody wishing to understand the darker side of the history of the Catholic Church, and is interesting for anyone who wished to read about organised crime in general.