Radio Vaticana tra apostolato, propaganda e diplomazia: dalla fondazione alla fine della Seconda guerra mondiale (1931-1945)

This dissertation concerns the history of Vatican Radio and its broadcasts spread in several languages from its foundation to the Second World War. The research demonstrates that Vatican Radio, a modern means of apostolate strongly wanted by Pius XI, during the war had become means of propaganda and counterpropaganda, as well as of diplomacy, used to defend the positions and the decisions of the Holy See. Radio Vatican has been studied as a special observatory to approach some of the most outstanding problems concerning the pontificate of Pius XII during the war: the position of the Church towards the conflict, the relationship with the regimes (communist, Italian fascism, national-socialism, of Vichy) and with the democracies (England and the United States). The analysis of the relations between Vatican Radio and the Roman Curia, the use made of this means, the contents of broadcasts, the decision to spread them, the modalities and the times of their diffusion, or of what was preferred to keep silent, all these questions have been an opportunity to meditate upon the government of Eugenio Pacelli's Church.