1Adrian Ciani’s monograph, Contesting Zion: The Vatican, American Catholics, and the Partition of Palestine, offers a new perspective on the Vatican’s attitude toward the Palestine question in the period between the 1920s and the 1950s. While grounded in existing scholarship on the Vatican’s position regarding Zionism, the establishment of the State of Israel, and its early relations with the new state, the monograph’s originality, as noted in the introduction, lies in examining this relationship “through a distinctly transnational lens” (p. 4). In fact, the study, which conceptualizes the Vatican as a “hybrid actor” in international affairs (p. 6), adopts the approach of recent historiography, emphasizing the Vatican’s role in shaping the international order in accordance with its own interests during the twentieth century, thereby highlighting the agency of the Catholic Church in this process. Ciani’s analysis is innovative in the way it assigns particular importance to the role of the American Catholic Church within the Vatican’s international networks, particularly in relation to the way it constrained the Zionist movement and shaped the Palestine question during the period under analysis.

2The work takes the form of six chapters, framed by an introduction and a conclusion. The first chapter, “Terra Santa: The Church and the Land”, opens with an account of the role of the Holy Land in Christianity at the latter’s origins and during the next few centuries. It then turns to the period of the Crusades before providing a concise reconstruction of the region’s later historical developments, from the Ottoman conquest to the second half of the nineteenth century, highlighting inter-religious conflicts, tensions among Christian sects, and the strengthening of the Holy See’s institutional presence in the region. This initial section helps the reader better understand the Holy See’s opposition to Zionism, which is examined in the remainder of the chapter, including the meetings between Zionist representatives and successive popes, as well as the Vatican’s stance on the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations’ assignment of the British Mandate over Palestine in 1922.

3The second chapter, “Toeing the Roman Line: American Catholics and the Palestine Question”, marks the beginning of the monograph’s core argument. It examines the factors that contributed to the emergence of a strong connection between the Vatican and American Catholics in the post-war period. It focuses in particular on the establishment of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), based in Washington, which represented the collective voice of American bishops during the interwar period and served as a prominent channel for articulating papal ideas regarding the post-war order. The author also emphasizes the role of financial resources and the growing influence of American Catholics as key factors in reinforcing the relationship between the Vatican and the American Catholic Church, alongside the Vatican’s cultivation of its connections with the American government. Moreover, in this chapter, the author shows effectively that the consolidation of the relationship and the alignment between the Vatican and American Catholics led the latter to actively endorse Vatican policies, a dynamic exemplified by their opposition to Zionism.

4In Chapter 3, “Into the Abyss: Church and the Holocaust”, Ciani highlights the fact that although American Catholics and the Vatican displayed differing attitudes during the Shoah – the former expressing sympathy for Jewish suffering more openly than the Holy See – their opposition to Zionism remained unchanged. However, the Holy See refrained from publicly voicing its opposition to Zionism during the Second World War, out of concern that doing so might jeopardize its improving relations with the United States, where political support for Zionism was growing.

5The subsequent chapters devote particular attention to the post-war period, examined more extensively than preceding periods. This can be explained by the fact that it was during this stage that the Vatican-American Catholic relationship took shape in tangible diplomatic action.

6Chapter 4, “Impatient Zionism and the Transnational Catholic Crusade for the Holy Land”, highlights the coalition between the Vatican and Washington that emerged in the summer of 1947. In the same year, the British Foreign Office referred the Palestine question to the United Nations. The author highlights the contributions of the NCWC’s UN Affairs Office, alongside those of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), in influencing debates leading to the UN General Assembly resolution of November 1947. The resolution proposed the partition of the territory into two states – one Arab and one Jewish – and the establishment of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum under a special international regime.

7The challenges to the implementation of this resolution are addressed in Chapter 5, “The Holy City Between Rome, Washington, and Tel Aviv”. In this chapter, the author highlights the role of American Catholics and describes carefully their efforts to defend the Vatican’s position in favor of the internationalization of Jerusalem. The last and most significant of these efforts took place in the autumn of 1949, marking the opening of Chapter 6, “Chimeras of Triumph”.

8The author demonstrates that these efforts contributed to the UN General Assembly vote in favor of the internationalization of Jerusalem in December 1949. In the following years, leading figures of the NCWC’s UN office acted as intermediaries not only between the Vatican and American actors, but also among Israeli and Jordanian interests. Even though Catholic pressure contributed to the survival of the corpus separatum, in December 1950 the vote did not reach the two-thirds majority required for adoption. From 1951, the Vatican relied on McMahon to defend internationalization, but by then his efforts were largely futile, as the city was now divided between Israel and Jordan. The author considers McMahon’s death in December 1956 as “the effective end of American Catholic efforts to actively shape the Jerusalem question.”

9By relying primarily on the records of American Catholic organizations – particularly the NCWC and, to a lesser extent, CNEWA – rather than on Vatican archival sources, the monograph is limited in its ability to provide a full understanding of the Holy See’s position and to reconstruct precisely the nature of the coordination between Vatican initiatives and American Catholic efforts. For instance, the Vatican did not simply instruct American Catholics to act in 1949 to secure the UN General Assembly vote in favor of the internationalization of Jerusalem; their efforts were part of a broader, coordinated diplomatic strategy organized by the Holy See at the international level.

10Nevertheless, the book succeeds in highlighting the growing role of American Catholic bishops and other leading figures as advocates for Vatican policy on Palestine, and later, the Jerusalem question, during the period under analysis. It demonstrates that they played a crucial role not only in conveying Vatican positions, but also in influencing the United States’ position and the decisions of the United Nations in accordance with the Holy See’s policy.