Frank J. Coppa is a recognized scholar of papal history. Author of several books on the topic, including a widely respected contribution on Vatican–Jewish relations, he is well placed to survey the popes' engagement in politics since the French Revolution—that is, since the age of Pius VI (1775–1799). Furnishing a series of brief papal biographies, as well as treatment of internal theological debates and pastoral concerns, what he has produced here goes somewhat beyond politics.

In Coppa's telling, Pius VI is the prototype for the anti-modern papacy—broadly, a stance of opposition against the advance of political “liberty” as preached by the prophets of modern popular democracy. Though this prototype emerged in the late eighteenth century, popes in subsequent centuries, especially Pius IX (1846–1878) and Pius X (1903–1914), perfected the anti-modernist position, making it the institutional face of the Catholicism during their reigns. Between these two influential popes, Leo XIII (1878–1903) became the prototype for another model that stressed positive engagement in modern politics, including an acceptance of democratic government—a model whose best exemplars would be John XXIII (1958–1963), Paul VI (1963–1978), and John Paul II (1978–2005). Coppa develops a story in which one of these two contrasting models emanated from the Vatican during a given period. Along the way, he draws out the contrast between the men who had previously served as Vatican-appointed diplomats (Leo XIII, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI) and those who had not (notably, Pius IX and Pius X). On the whole, Coppa suggests that each pope's skill at the Church and state interface was contingent upon whether he had diplomatic experience. Former Vatican diplomats tended to exercise greater dexterity—and, arguably, attain more success—in their relations with secular governments and institutions.

Coppa asserts that the most significant political shift among modern popes took place under Leo XIII who declared that the Church preferred no single style or form of government over another, so long as it aimed toward justice. Previously, popes championed monarchy; after Leo, though, they developed sympathy for various alternative governmental forms, including fascism. Especially under Pius XII (1939–1958) and his successors, Coppa traces dramatic improvement of popular democracy from the Vatican's perspective—a development largely fueled by cold war exigencies and the desire to stem the tide of “godless communism.” He also dwells on the strategy of dialing back anti-communist rhetoric under John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II, each of whom lamented the extreme inequality and the North–South hemispheric divide produced by democratic capitalism's triumph. Though never communist sympathizers, these Cold War popes were hardly silent about what they considered moral defects within Western-style democracies.

Discussions of theological and pastoral issues detract from the focus of this book, but it remains a useful, accessible survey of relations between secular governments and the modern Roman pontiffs.