Massimo Franco

A law graduate from the University of Rome, Massimo Franco is a political columnist for “Corriere della Sera,” Italy’s largest newspaper, and he has published also in “Avvenire,” “Il Giorno,” “Panorama.” His broad audience in Italy consolidated further with the publication of dozens of books on Italian and Vatican politics over the years. But Franco’s platform also stretches abroad: he is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley; he collaborates with the US media platform “The Globalist,” and has penned several articles for “The Guardian” and, more recently, “The New York Times”.
His most notable book titles include:

- Imperi paralleli. Vaticano e Stati Uniti: due secoli di alleanza e conflitto 1788-2005, 2005, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. tr. in the U.S. by Doubleday-Random House in 2009 under the title Parallel Empires: The Vatican and the United States, 223 p.);
- Crisis in the Vatican empire: From the death of John Paul II to the resignation of Benedict XVI, why the Church has become the new global culprit, 2013, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore (also published in the U.S. in 2013 by Mondadori);
- Il Vaticano secondo Francesco. Da Buenos Aires a Santa Marta: come Bergoglio sta cambiando la Chiesa e conquistando i fedeli di tutto il mondo, 2014, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. (Translated into Spanish and published in Argentina by Edizioni Aguilar of the Penguin-Random House group in 2014 under the title El Vaticano segùn Francisco);
- L’enigma Bergoglio (Solferino, 1st edition 2020, 2nd edition 2023);
- ll monastero. Benedetto XVI, nove anni di papato-ombra (Solferino, 2022).