Ambrogio A. Caiani

Ambrogio is currently Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Kent in Canterbury and lives in Southwark. He is the author of four books which have focused on European History, especially the French Revolution, Napoleon and Catholicism's fraught relationship with modernity. His second book, To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII 1800-1815, was published by Yale University Press in April 2021, just before the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death and won the 2021 Franco-British Book Prize.

His newest book is: 'Flirting with Evil, The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation.' It is a candid portrait of the Faustian pacts made with totalitarian dictatorships and the many scandals (both sexual and financial) that have plagued the Roman church. Despite this litany of poor choices, the book also celebrates the Second Vatican Council and its message of renewal and hope. Indeed, after a pretty dire twentieth century, thanks to the Pontificates of Francis I and Leo XIV, Catholics can look to the twenty-first century in a spirit of hope and renewal.