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The Entity: Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage, by Eric Frattini
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The International Bestseller
“A true story that surpasses any novel by John le Carré.”—El País (Spain)
For five centuries, the Vatican—the oldest organization in the world, maker of kings and shaper of history—has used a secret spy service, called the Holy Alliance, or later, the Entity, to carry out its will. Forty popes have relied on it to carry out their policies. They have played a hitherto invisible role confronting de-Christianizations and schisms, revolutions and dictators, colonizations and expulsions, persecutions and attacks, civil wars and world wars, assassinations and kidnappings.
For the first time in English (following the bestselling Spanish and French editions), Eric Frattini tells the comprehensive tale of this sacred secret service. The Entity has been involved in the killings of monarchs, poisonings of diplomats, financing of South American dictators, protection of war criminals, laundering of Mafia money, manipulation of financial markets, provocation of bank failures, and financing of arms sales to combatants even as their wars were condemned, all in the name of God. The contradiction between God’s justice and Earth’s justice, Christian beliefs and Christian power all fall before the motto of the Entity: With the Cross and the Sword.
- Sales Rank: #830340 in Books
- Published on: 2008-11-25
- Released on: 2008-11-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.60" h x 1.66" w x 6.45" l, 1.65 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 448 pages
Review
International Praise for The Entity
“Through his meticulously documented research into five centuries of history, Eric Frattini gives us an exclusive look at the hidden face of the papacy---revelations that send a chill up the spine.”—Le Monde
“A devastating book.”—Valeurs (France)
“A must-read.”—El Universal (Mexico)
“An investigation worthy of a Pulitzer. Frattini puts all the secrets of the Vatican out on the table.”—Diário de Notícias (Portugal)
About the Author
Eric Frattini has written books on the FBI, the UN, and the CIA, and is the author of Mafia Inc.: 100 Years of Cosa Nostra. He is a TV correspondent and lives in Spain.
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
sub-society and research concerns
By S. L. Sinclair
Truly not a bad historical reference book of the Church. Providing insight into each important conclave and the divisions therein were, for me, interesting. Also in dealing with the papal states, their maintenance and eventual loss, was somewhat informative. The dealings of various European rulers and leaders with the Church added to my knowledge some new information.
My concern, and I'll admit it's a small one, deals with the fact gathering of groups like the Octogonus Circle, the Society of the Thirteen and others. What an ominous name - Octogonus Circle. We are so intrigued today with anything secret and hidden and as readers we enjoy conspiracies and spy-like games. Why is it that a group such as one of these, that has existed for nearly 500 years is basically non-existent on the Internet? On Amazon, The Octogonus Circle, by Peter Harris is only offered in Spanish and appears to be the only book like it anywhere. This book is not even referenced in Mr Frattini's bibliography! Moreover, there is nothing on the Internet aside these two books referencing the Circle. The same exists with the Society of the Thirteen, minus one book or at least the one that I could find.
I do ask where he gathered the information on these groups.
While I concede that what happens within governments is on most levels unknown to us. We truly have no clue, so I did find this book interesting. But I must wonder about certain aspects of this book, even though the bibliography is well listed - minus one aspect...
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
An ambitious project that falls short of the mark
By Thomas Bender
This book purports to be a history of Vatican secret agents, espionage, counter-espionage, and generally covert activities that have been covered up over time by the Vatican. The premise is intriguing and enticing, playing to our modern prejudices about nation states and the role of intelligence operations and covert operations to further one's objectives. Moreover, the existence of a presumably natural intelligence network (all the Catholic parishes, dioceses and episcopal conferences in the world) plus an accomplished diplomatic corps and foreign service - let alone the existence of the Vatican Secret Archives - suggests that there must be something to this work. I bought the book for myself and a relative.
A few introductory comments about style are in order. The first half of the book reads more like a combination of fiction and factual evidence. There are colorful details that could not be known (cardinals in carriages sketching signs of the cross in the middle of the night, priests hiding behind walls, etc) that stretch one's sense of credulity. There are jumps in logic that may seem intuitive but are without basis, usually introduced by phrases like "must have been" (for example, a prostitute is accused of being a Holy Alliance agent at one point who informed on someone). And there are insinuations to out-right claims that are unsubstantiated (the Stuart dynasty being fathered by a Vatican-deployed Italian priest who was an aide to the queen of Scotland). This style becomes tedious, especially when important information is not footnoted and one is forced to wonder how the jump is being made. It was extremely difficult to work through the first half of the book for this reason. The second half of the work reads much faster and tends to have fewer of these contrived associations and conclusions. Even so, there is a heavy reliance on associations, correlations, and insinuations.
Conceding that a project of this sort is a difficult undertaking given the thesis of the book, there are a number of problematic scholarly issues. A detailed survey of the endnotes reveals that the author has surveyed secondary sources rather extensively but has cited relatively few primary sources. This aspect of the documentation makes it difficult to judge whether the veracity of the accounts is accurate or someone else's spin of events. And there is no discussion of the secondary sources themselves to help judge their veracity. There were at least two endnotes associated with near certain declarations of fact that were acknowledged as unsubstantiated rumor and conjecture in the endnote itself. There were occasional endnotes that merely stated innocuous facts but did not document the source material for the noted statements. There were whole discussions of historical situations that required footnotes that were not noted. While in many histories this approach may be less problematic, the nature of this author's approach - attempting to sift through multiple sources and not having access to the Vatican Secret Archives - makes attention to detail imperative. Most disturbing were the discussions of political maneuvering within the conclaves that required some discussion of sources. Since all participants take an oath of secrecy under pain of excommunication, sourcing the information is important to avoid charges of sensationalizing and fictionalizing the accounts for dramatic purposes. Add onto this problem the acknowledgment by the author that there are no videos, recordings, phone taps, written minutes, or public accounts of these proceedings, and one can see that there is a huge gap in documentation. Perhaps most disappointing from the scholarly perspective were accounts from the 20th century that were not corroborated by available secular primary sources.
The discussion of sneaking Nazi criminals out of Europe is fascinating. It is unclear to what extent it was a true operation of the Holy Alliance based on this presentation. It is clear that officials in the Vatican were aware and tolerated the operation.
While the discussion of the IOR/Vatican Bank scandals was interesting, it seemed somewhat gratuitous given that the central theme of the book was not oriented to financial mismanagement and scandals in the Vatican. There were many insinuations about Vatican agents doing things - Catholic "men in black" - without good documentation. It would have been interesting to have the author cite the American Justice Department investigation, which presumably would have been available under the Freedom of Information Act.
Overall, the book's central premise - that the Vatican has some sort of intelligence service that has been operative for several centuries - seems substantiated in part. It is hard to sort through the information, innuendo, and associations provided by the author to tease out the real facts. Doubtlessly, fans of this tome and other Vatican conspiracy theory books will lament the lack of access to real information sources in the Vatican, its archives, and the files of various national intelligence services. However, the style is problematic at best. The reliance on secondary sources creates its own set of questions and problems, especially since the author fails to discuss them in the text and/or endnotes. And the suspension of disbelief required regarding the garnering of some of the information staggers the imagination. Fiction and fact mix in this account, and it is difficult at times to differentiate them. Read with caution and a strong sense of skepticism.
25 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
Jesus in the Underworld
By Thomas J. Hickey
Frattini says: "The Entity" is the current name for the Vatican's intelligence agency, which was founded by Pope Pius V in 1566. Its original name was the "Holy Alliance" until renamed "The Entity" in 1930 by Pope Pius XI. In 1913 Pius X founded a counterintelligence agency called "Sodalitium Pianum" to uncover enemy spies in the Vatican. In more recent times the Entity has collaborated with the US CIA and the Israeli Mossad. Also examined is the "Istituto per le Opere di Religione" (a.k.a. the "Vatican Bank"), which reports directly to the Pope and finances covert operations. The book's subtitle is "Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage", and it purportedly describes the operations of these Vatican intelligence agencies from their founding to today's papacy.
The book is written both in the style of a chronological documentary with endnotes and also in the style of a novel by an omniscient author. The story-telling narrative describing plots mitigates the tedium of documentary recitation. The reader is a fly on the wall snooping on the sleuths, an insider privy to plots, comments and secrets of persons long dead.
It is unlikely that the Vatican - the world's oldest organization - has survived for two millennia in the jungle of world affairs by assuming a role and status comparable to Walt Disney's naïve and wide-eyed Bambi. It has protected itself and its self-consciously messianic otherworld mission against very worldly predatory enemies by making alliances with other equally unsavory but less unsympathetic worldly predators.
But some of the Vatican's many bargains with the Devil have been Faustian. It has become entangled in affairs that would likely not have been approved by the historic Jesus or by the early Christians, who were content merely to practice their religion without persecution by the Emperor of ancient Rome and martyrdom by the jaws of his lions in his Coliseum.
This is a believe-it-or-not book. Assuming heroically(!) no outright speculative fabrications in its pages the reader still must judge for himself how much this expose of the more sinister clandestine events actually reveals guilt by participation and how much it unjustly assigns guilt by association.
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