KENT, Peter C. 1938-

PERSONAL:

Born July 11, 1938, in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada; son of Clifford S. (an aviator) and Lois M. (a salesperson; maiden name, Flower) Kent; married Wendy Preece (a social worker), August 16, 1964; children: Darryl. Ethnicity: "Caucasian/Anglo-Saxon." Education: University of New Brunswick, B.A., 1959, B.Ed., 1965; University of London, M.Sc., 1961, Ph.D., 1978. Religion: Anglican. Hobbies and other interests: Helping with the Canadian Boy Scouts.

ADDRESSES:

Home—88 Selkirk Cres., Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada E3C 1N5. Office—Department of History, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada E3B 5A3. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Oromocto School Board, Oromocto, New Brunswick, Canada, teacher, 1961-62; Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, teacher, 1962-65; University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, 1965—, began as lecturer, became professor of history, chair of history department, 1980-86, dean of faculty of arts, 1988-89.

MEMBER:

Canadian Historical Association, Society for Italian Historical Studies.

WRITINGS:

The Pope and the Duce: The International Impact of the Lateran Agreements, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1981.

(Editor, with John F. Pollard) Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, Praeger (Westport, CT), 1994.

The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943-1950, McGill-Queen's University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2002.

Contributor to professional journals, including Catholic Historical Review, Italian Quarterly, European History Quarterly, Canadian Journal of History, Journal of Contemporary History, Conflict Quarterly, Acadiensis, and Historical Papers of the Canadian Historical Association.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Books on Pope Pius XII during the 1950s and on the University of New Brunswick Strax Affair of 1968 to 1969.

SIDELIGHTS:

Although a great deal has been written about the role Pope Pius XII played during World War II, not nearly as much as been said about the pope's part in international affairs after the war. University of New Brunswick history professor Peter C. Kent saw a need to fill this gap, and the result was his 2002 book, The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943-1950, which Canadian Journal of History contributor Dennis J. Dunn called a "valuable book" on the subject. The work, continued Dunn, "is particularly useful in its treatment of the complexities of Catholic Church policy in Eastern and Western Europe and the United States."

After the war, tensions grew between East and West as the communist government of the Soviet Union took a powerful grip on Eastern Europe. Pope Pius XII wished to see Europe united and guided under Christian morals, and he subsequently took a strong stand against the USSR. In Kent's book, the author argues that such an inflexible stance led to "missed opportunities to advance the interests of the Church," related Dunn. The Communist ideology opposed organized religion because it supposedly detracted people's attention from a devotion to the state. Communist Russia therefore instituted repressive policies against the Catholic Church, not only in the USSR, but also in the satellite states of Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. As John S. Conway explained in the Catholic Historical Review, "Papal diplomacy was unable to prevent either the Communist monopoly of power in eastern Europe, or the division of the continent into rival military blocs. Its influence and credibility were being savagely attacked. And Pius XII's later retreat to a position of spiritual righteousness and inflexible anticommunism did little to reverse this unlucky situation."

Kent faults Pius XII for listening to the advice of anti-Communist leaders in the Church, such as Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, and contends that the pope would have been better served by taking an approach suggested by Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, who felt the Church should try to work within the limitations of the political reality of the cold war. While Conway felt that the author's viewpoint is "in part justified, … [it] should be offset by recognizing that the more flexible policies of his [Pius XII's] successors were no more successful, at least in the short run." Dunn similarly wrote that Kent's "interpretation is too one-sided. He does not appreciate the fact that John Paul II's fierce anti-Communism, which helped bring down the Iron Curtain, had much more in common with Pius XII's stance than with Paul VI's." Outside of this complaint, however, most reviewers admired Kent's contribution to the subject, as well as his research. Because the Church's archives dating to the period in question are closed to public access, Kent had to work around this major barrier, but still managed to produce a "lengthy and excellently researched survey," according to Conway.

Kent told CA: "My initial research into diplomatic history led me to the study of Italian foreign policy in the 1930s and, in particular, to relations between Mussolini's Fascist regime and the Vatican. The difficulty of studying the Vatican in the twentieth century is that the Vatican archives are closed after 1922, with the exception of the published collection of documents on the Vatican during the Second World War.

"My research in diplomatic history led me to examine the reports of the ambassadors and ministers accredited to the Holy See and, in this way, I found that one could explain and understand Vatican policy through this diplomatic correspondence, even if one did not have access to the actual Vatican archives. Because of this, I have moved more into writing about the 'foreign relations' of the Holy See, with articles on the relationship of the Vatican to the Rome-Berlin Axis and a book on the role of the Vatican and the Catholic Church in the origins of the cold war."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Journal of History, April, 2004, Dennis J. Dunn, review of The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943-1950, p. 169.

Catholic Historical Review, October, 2003, John S. Conway, review of The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII, p. 799.*