Catholic Internationalism and the Vatican: the history of a difficult embrace (1945-1958)

SAM KUIJKEN

The seventh appointment of the permanent seminar on the History of the Papacy will be held on Monday 22th of  April at 5pm, Aula F007. 
On this occasion Sam Kuijken, of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, will give a lecture entitled “Catholic Internationalism and the Vatican: the history of a difficult embrace (1945-1958)”. 
Kuijken will focus in particular on the relatively recent development of Catholic internationalism, which has its roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
After gradually emerging during the post-war years, the explosive proliferation of catholic international organizations occurred only from 1945 onwards, stimulated by Maritain's Integral Humanism and further galvanized by the shared experience of war and post-war sudden rise in cooperation between states (UN, NATO, European integration...).
Based on new sources from the Vatican Archives, Kuijken's lecture will address a crucial episode in the history of Catholic internationalism, namely its definitive turning point and its difficult reception by the Vatican in the post-war years during the pontificate of Pius XII ( 1945-1958).