The subtitle of this book is meant to suggest the evolution of the role of the popes over five centuries. In the introduction the editors promise that the twelve chapters that follow will show how the pope became a universal pastor, as if the popes of the High Middle Ages did not exert their authority throughout non-Orthodox Europe and even in the Levant. The editors do not explain why they selected particular popes for individual study and excluded others—why Julius II and not Leo X, why not Paul III or any other pontiffs involved in the Council of Trent. Only one pope in the whole seventeenth century, Urban VIII, is the subject of an essay, and none in the eighteenth. The later chapters focus narrowly on only one or another aspect of the pontificates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The papal promotion of foreign missionary activity is nowhere recognized. The editors candidly admit that, despite the title, their book is not a general history of the papacy in modern times.

In the first chapter Frederick J. Baumgartner presents Julius II, the papa terribile, as prince, patron, and pastor; the “warrior pope” was “first of all the supreme pastor of the Catholic Church” (19) who convoked the Fifth Lateran Council; he also commissioned great artists and architects to produce masterpieces of the Renaissance. Kenneth Gouwens promises in the title of his chapter to consider Clement VII as a “prince at war,” but also describes the pope's patronage of culture. Gouwens draws upon recent revisionist accounts of Clement's pontificate to modify the longstanding negative judgment of the pope; he views Clement's failures in the context of major changes in the dynamics of European politics, which frustrated his desire to be a good pastor.

In “The Pope as saint” Pamela M. Jones looks at Pius V through the eyes of Sixtus V and Clement XI, studying first his elaborate tomb monument in Santa Maria Maggiore and his biography by Girolamo Catena, both of which Sixtus sponsored, and then the official image for his canonization by Clement XI in 1712 and the new biography by Paolo Alessandro Maffei; she compares the two vite in the light of the changed political circumstances at the times of their composition.

In the context of the revisionary historical evaluation of Urban VIII's pontificate Sheila Barker studies the pasquinades composed after his death in 1644. Not a Francophile as charged, she concludes, Urban vacillated between France and Spain. She devotes only a few pages to his patronage of art and culture. Gemma Simmonds in “Jansenism versus papal absolutism” does not focus her attention on any pope but rather on Antoine Arnauld and other early promoters of the ideas and reforms of Port-Royal. Thomas Worcester, S.J., the co-editor, extols Pius VII for his “moderation in an age of revolution and reaction” (subtitle) in an essay that provides a good survey of the pontificate as viewed by contemporary writers and recent scholars. Worcester calls Pius “a bridge between the papacy prior to the French Revolution and the papacy as it developed in the nineteenth century” (123).

Ciarán O'Carroll tries futilely to sketch Pius IX's thirty-two-year pontificate in eighteen pages, going from country to country without a footnote until he comes to Ireland, which is his main interest. Thomas Massaro, S.J., tracks the use of encyclicals before and during the pontificate of Leo XIII and then concentrates on Reum novarum and the pope's handling of “the social question” arising from the relations between capital and labor.

In a more original and well-documented essay Charles R. Gallagher, S.J., examines how British Catholics perceived and received the Holy See's position of neutrality or absolute impartiality during World War I. He explains the Holy See's adoption of that principle of international relations that prevented Benedict XV from publicly judging the morality of war actions; this policy caused bewilderment, consternation, and questioning among the insular faithful.

John F. Pollard investigates how the popes from Pius XI to John XXIII used radio, cinema, and television and how Catholics and non-Catholics received the images projected by these media. He recounts in fascinating detail the role of Vatican Radio during World War II and the 1942 film Pastor angelicus on Pius XII. Linda Hogan traces the reception of Paul VI's and John Paul II's moral teaching on new questions of sexuality and war. She is critical of the magisterium's position on the inseparability of the unitive and procreative dimensions of intercourse, but she recognizes approvingly the evolving guidance of the popes regarding the relationship between peace and development, the role of international institutions, and the use of nuclear weapons.

In the last essay James Corkery, S.J., the other co-editor, measures the extent to which John Paul II was really a “universal pastor” of the Church; he discerns this pope's continuity and discontinuity with his predecessors, his essential message, with which he was personally identified, and concern for the human person. In part sentimentally but also critically Corkery shows how John Paul was a great communicator through his travels and the media but also questions the pontiff's impact on the world judged on a scale of lasting results.

In the conclusion, the Jesuit co-editors, one a theologian (Corkery) and the other a historian (Worcester), justify their interdisciplinary approach. They wanted to emphasize how the papacy has evolved in response to historical events and to the reception of its responses. They collect different aspects of the twelve essays and apply them to the papacy of the incumbent, Benedict XVI.

Seven of the twelve the authors are historians; one is an art historian (Jones); and four are theologians (Corkery, Hogan, Massaro, and Simmonds). Only Barber, O'Carroll and Pollard have done archival research, but they all give evidence of familiarity with contemporary published sources and with the historical literature. There is one comprehensive bibliography for all the essays, and there are ten apposite illustrations. Every student of the modern papacy will surely find much of value in this collection of disparate essays.