Professor
Department of History
coppaf@stjohns.edu
Frank J. Coppa is Professor of History. He received his B.A.
from Brooklyn College of the City University, and M.A. and Ph.D.
from the Catholic University of America. His research interests in
Papal, Italian, and European history has led to the
publication of over a dozen volumes including works such as
Economics and Politics in the Giolittian Age (1971),
Camillo di Cavour (1973), Pope Pius IX: Crusader in a
Secular Age (1979)and Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli and Papal
Politicsin European Affairs (1990).
He has served as editor-in-chief and contributor to the
Dictionary of Modern Italian History (1985) and has
written the fifth and final volume in the “Longman History of the
Papacy,’ entitled The Modern Papacy (1998), and in 1999
served as editor-in-chief and contributor to Encyclopedia of
the Vatican and Papacy and Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s
Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler.
He has reviewed all the popes and anti-popes for the
Encyclopedia Britannica’s online references to the papacy
and all the popes from the Renaissance through Gregory XVI for the
new edition of The CatholicEncyclopedia. He has also
served as general editor as well as contributor to The Great
Popes Through History (2002) and published The Papacy
Confronts the Modern World in the Anvil series (2003). More
recently he has published The Papacy, the Jews and the
Holocaust (2006) and the Encyclopedia of Modern Dictators:
From Napoleon to the Present (2006).