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Zusatztext "He fetches Christianity onto the stage of history. Martin enjoys indulging his considerable skills, much to the pleasure of the reader." -- The New York Times "...a meditation on the troubled state of today's Catholic Church... [Martin's] knowledge of Vatican politics is extraordinary." -- Kirkus Reviews Informationen zum Autor Malachi Martin (1921-1999) was an Irish Catholic priest who also wrote many books on the Catholic Church including The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church , Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans , and Keys of This Blood: Pope John Paul II Versus Russia and the West for Control of the New World Order . Klappentext The Cold War has ended. With a scope and daring not possible until now, an unlikely international alliance of top-level political, financial, and religious interests sees the way clear at last to its ultimate goal: the establishment of a single global society. Utopia. These are men with nothing in common but immense power and a towering ambition for still more. With world unity and prosperity as their slogan--and with betrayal, scandal, and murder as their ready weapons--they have the means and the will to capture as their own the perfect global machinery for their plans: the oldest, wiliest, and most stable political chancery in the world--the Vatican. At the vortex of this lethal struggle stands the embattled Pope, a geopolitical genius whose elimination is the short-term solution to a long-term goal, and two American brothers, Paul and Christian Gladstone, one a lawyer and the other a priest, who appear to be the perfect pawns. One falls prey to the sharp teeth of greed for power. The other will become one of the Slavic Pontiff's closest allies...and will discover the darkest secrets at the very heart of papal Rome. From America to Europe to Russia, in broad landscapes and clandestine corridors, a rich and varied cast--presidents and politicos, simple saints and savvy sinners, popes and pope-makers--clash with one another amid dramatic and sometimes bloody events that will affect the destiny of every person alive today. Leseprobe History as Prologue: End Signs 1957 Diplomats schooled in harsh times and in the toughest ways of finance, trade and international rivalry are not much given to omens. Still, today's enterprise brimmed with such promise that the six Foreign Ministers who gathered in Rome on March 25, 1957, felt that everything surrounding them--the rock-solid centrality of Europe's premier city, the cleansing winds, the open skies, the benign smile of the day's climate--was fortune's very cloak of blessing drawn about them as they laid the foundation stone for a new edifice of nations. As partners in the creation of a new Europe that would sweep away the squabbling nationalism that had so often split this ancient delta, these six men and their governments were one in their faith that they were about to open their lands to a wider economic horizon and a taller political sky than had ever been contemplated. They were about to sign the treaties of Rome. They were about to create the European Economic Community. In recent memory, nothing but death and destruction had been spawned in their capitals. Only the year before, the Soviets had underscored their expansionist determination in the blood of Hungary's attempted uprising; any day Soviet armor could roll across Europe. No one expected the U.S.A. and its Marshall Plan to carry forever the burdens of building the new Europe. Nor did any European government wish to be clamped between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. in a rivalry that could only deepen in the decades ahead. As if already accustomed to acting as one in the face of such reality, all six ministers signed on as founders of the EEC. The three representatives of the Benelux nati...
