David B. Woolner

In this collection of essays, leading scholars analyze the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church in America. With the nation mired in economic depression and the threat of war looming across the Atlantic, in 1932 Catholics had to weigh political allegiance versus religious affiliation. Many chose party over religion, electing FDR, a Protestant. This book, a complex blend of religion and politics with the added ingredients of economics and war, grew out of an international conference in 1998 held at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York. From the multiplicity of Catholic responses to the New Deal, through FDR’s diplomatic relationship with the Vatican during World War II, and on to the response of the US and the Vatican to the Holocaust, this book expands our understanding of a fascinating and largely unexplored aspect of FDR’s presidency.