On Monday, 1 December 2025, at 5:00 p.m., the Pontifical Gregorian University hosted the presentation of the edited volume Vatican Diplomacy and the Shaping of the West during the Pontificate of Pius XII, published by Studium. The Fraknói Research Group was represented at the event by its Vatican archival research resident, Katalin Nagy.
The collection of studies, edited by Roberto Regoli, Paolo Valvo and Nicholas J. Doublet, examines the diplomatic activity of Pius XII (1939–1958) and its impact on the Western world, with particular emphasis on the decades of the Second World War and the Cold War.
The event opened with addresses by Paul Oberholzer SJ, Dean of the Faculty of History at the Gregorian University, and Marek Inglot SJ, Director of the Miscellanea Historiae Pontificiae series and President of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. The volume was presented by Liliosa Azara and Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, professors at Roma Tre University. The discussion was moderated by Francis X. Rocca, Vatican correspondent of The Wall Street Journal.
The book maps the scope of Vatican foreign policy in the context of the Second World War and the emergence of the bipolar international order, analysing how the Holy See’s diplomacy contributed to shaping the political and ideological contours of the “West.” Drawing on newly opened fonds of the Vatican archives—especially nunciature reports and documents of interstate negotiations—the contributors explore peace initiatives, strategies vis-à-vis communist regimes, and the Holy See’s relations with Western democracies.
The presence of several contributors and the editors offered participants the opportunity to engage directly with the latest findings of Pius XII research, the new possibilities afforded by the recently opened Vatican archives, and the influence of this period on the Holy See’s contemporary understanding of its own foreign policy. The volume includes a contribution by Hungarian scholar Tamás Véghseő.
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On the following day, 2 December, the Rome headquarters of the Istituto Storico Austriaco hosted the presentation of a new book by Alexander Koller, Deputy Director of the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom: Santacroce auf der Reise nach Prag. Die Diarien des Pompeo Vizani von 1581 im Kontext vergleichbarer Reiseberichte. The event began at 6:00 p.m. in the Institute’s building at Viale Bruno Buozzi 111–113 and attracted an audience interested in early modern travel literature and papal diplomacy.
Koller’s work publishes and analyses the 1581 travel diaries of the Bolognese humanist Pompeo Vizani, which accompany Ottavio Santacroce’s journey to Prague, placing the text in dialogue with other comparable contemporary travel accounts. This critical edition—complete with commentary and translation—makes available previously unpublished material situated at the intersection of the Habsburg court, the Kingdom of Bohemia and papal diplomacy.
The presentation opened with institutional greetings by Andreas Gottsmann, Director of the Istituto Storico Austriaco, and Riccardo Gandolfi, Director of the Rome State Archive, who highlighted the volume’s significance for research on early modern diplomacy and travel writing. This was followed by presentations from historian Stefano Andretta (Università Roma Tre), Tomáš Černušák, Director of the Czech Historical Institute in Rome (Český historický ústav v Římě), and professor Irene Fosi (Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio” Chieti–Pescara), who discussed the main thematic nodes of the Vizani diaries, with particular attention to the representation of the Prague court, Italo–Central European relations, and travel as a practice of observation.
Speakers emphasised that the volume not only provides a detailed account of a single diplomatic mission but also offers a comparative framework for understanding the travel experiences of Catholic diplomats in the late sixteenth century. The publication of the diaries opens a new source base for ecclesiastical, court and transport-history research, while shedding light on the often underestimated network of relations between Bologna and the Habsburg monarchy.
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The Fraknói Research Group maintains regular professional collaboration with both historians. Don Roberto Regoli has participated in the Research Group’s Budapest conferences in 2013 and 2019, as well as its 2025 Rome conference and this year’s book launch. He also delivered a lecture at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in 2016 on the First Vatican Council.
Alexander Koller presented at the Fraknói Research Group’s 2013 Budapest conference and opened the Rome presentation of CVH volumes I/18 (by Tamás Fedeles) and II/10 (by Gábor Nemes) at the Deutsches Historisches Institut in 2022. Both of these active working relationships have developed over the course of the basic archival research conducted by the Group in the Vatican Apostolic Archives continuously since 1996.
