Parallel empires : the Vatican and the United States--two centuries of alliance and conflict / Massimo Franco ; translated from the Italian by Roland Flamini.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-212) and index.

1. Conclave on Air Force One -- 2. The Cardinal Who Hunted Heretics -- 3. President Washington, Pius VI Requests ... -- 4. Papal Blunders -- 5. Ghosts of the Ku Klux Klan -- 6. A Wartime Expediency -- 7. The Anticommunist Triangle -- 8. Kennedy's "Next Time" -- 9. An Almost Holy Alliance -- 10. The Woman from the FBI and the Pedophiles -- 11. The Empire of Right -- 12. Pacifism and Peace -- 13. Condoleezza and the Cardinal -- 14. The Broken Bridge to Islam -- 15. The Less Damaging President -- 16. Three Presidents in Saint Peter's Square -- Postscript: A Pope in the White House.

"Drawing on unique access to the archives of the Holy See and a range of sources in both Washington, D.C., and Rome, Parallel Empires charts the path of U.S.-Vatican relations to reveal the dramatic religious and political tensions that have shaped their dealings and our world." "Starting with the Holy See's initial diplomatic overtures to the United States in the 1780s, Franco illuminates a two-hundred-year-old history of alliances, mutual exploitation, and misperceptions. From the nativist anti-Catholicism of the nineteenth century, through JFK's election as America's first Catholic president and the cold war anti-Communist partnership between the United States and the Holy See, to the establishment of full diplomatic relations in 1984, the story has never before been told quite like this. With U.S.-Vatican affairs still evolving in the present day, Parallel Empires also details the most recent developments of this ever-changing and often tenuous relationship, including contemporary disagreements over the Iraq war and engagement with the Islamic world, as well as the Papacy of Benedict XVI."--BOOK JACKET.