Marion Dotter (Collegium Carolinum, Munich)
Julian Sandhagen (GHI Rome)
Viktoriia Serhiienko (GHI Warsaw)
World War II ended for Pope Pius XII with an ambivalent result: the Holy See was widely regarded as a reinvigorated institution of peaceful reconstruction, but the pontifex was confronted with the fact that communism, with its repressive church policy, had penetrated far into the Catholic heart of Europe. Former strongholds of the Catholic faith like Poland, Slovakia and Croatia were now governed by atheist ideologues who regarded the Catholic Church with suspicion or outright contempt. Nearly everywhere in East-Central and Southeastern Europe, the Church subsequently came under immense pressure and faced tough questions on how to deal with these new regimes.
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