Keepers of the Keys of Heaven – A History of the Papacy by Roger Collins (Orion Books, £14.99) (From York Press)

Keepers of the Keys of Heaven – A History of the Papacy by Roger Collins (Orion Books, £14.99)

8:00am Saturday 20th March 2010 in

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ANYONE venturing to write a history of 265 holders of the same title, plus assorted wannabes to it, risks producing an endless list and nothing more. Collins avoids this in his account of the Papacy from St Peter to Benedict the 16th, by concentrating on the issues that faced the Papacy over the centuries and how it achieved its global authority.

This enables him to give due prominence to those Popes who left a lasting mark while skimming rapidly over those who didn’t.

At the same time, he gives plenty of space to matters the Papal authorities would rather keep quiet, such as the question marks over the “bones of St Peter” found under St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican, the evolution of Rome’s claim to be the headquarters of the Catholic Church and the doubts about the Vatican’s stance on the Holocaust during World War Two.

Such a wealth of information squeezed into 600 pages does make intense reading despite being well-written, so it is definitely a book to dip into rather than read from cover to cover.