Documenting an audacious Franco-German movement for moral disarmament, instigated in 1921 by war veteran and French Catholic politician Marc Sangnier, in this transnational study Gearóid Barry examines the European resonance of Sangnier's Peace Congresses and their political and religious ecumenism within France in the era of two World Wars.
'Gearóid Barry's highly engaging biography of Sangnier looks beyond the abysmal 12-year span of the Third Reich. He demonstrates convincingly that post-Second-World-War Christian Democracy owed much to the efforts of Sangnier and his contemporaries stress[ing]the transnational as well as the national nature of his subject. Gearóid Barry is to be congratulated for his insightful and original analysis of people and events central to the creation of contemporary Europe.'- Conan Fischer, European History Quarterly, 45 (1)