Robert A. Graham

Graham was born on March 11, 1912, in Sacramento, California, the son of Charlie Graham, a former professional baseball player for the Boston Red Sox and part owner of the San Francisco Seals, Graham joined the California province of the Jesuits as a young man. He was ordained a priest in 1941 and was soon sent to New York City to work on the Jesuit weekly America, where he remained for two decades. Taking a sabbatical, in 1952, he earned a doctorate in political science and international law from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

In 1959, his book, Vatican Diplomacy: A Study of Church and State on the International Plane, was published.

To counter growing attacks, in 1965 the Vatican began publication of some of its wartime documents in a series of books edited by a Jesuit team, Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Graham joined them in Rome in 1966 and worked on volume three of what grew to eleven by the project's completion in 1981. In 1968, Graham published a book, The Pope and Poland in World War II, a summary of Volume III of the Actes, which deals with the Church in Poland.

Graham often published the findings of his research in La Civiltà Cattolica, the Jesuit-run, Catholic journal in Italy. In 1996, Graham published English translations of some of his La Civilta Cattolica articles in his book, The Vatican and Communism During World War: What Really Happened.{{cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=K0kBKrXmz6kC&pg=PA7 | last=Graham|first= Robert | title =The Vatican and Communism During World War II: What Really Happened|date=1996|page= 7|via=Google Books}}

Graham often wrote a column for Columbia, the official magazine of the Knights of Columbus.

In matters regarding Pius XII, he worked with Raimondo Spiazzi. The New York Times quoted Graham: "I am 79, I thought I ought to unload this stuff, before I pop off".New York Times, February 17, 1997, p. 31 Graham remained in Rome until illness struck in 1996, when he returned to his native California. He died in Los Gatos, California, on February 11, 1997, aged 84, leaving behind a large body of published and unpublished work.

• Alvarez, David and Graham, Robert A., Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage Against the Vatican, 1939-1945, Routledge, 1997
• Graham, Robert A, The Vatican and Communism during World War II, What Really Happened, Ignatius Press, 1996
• Graham. Robert A., The Pope in Poland in World War Two, Veritas, 1968
• Graham, Robert A., Vatican Diplomacy: A Study of Church & State on the International Plane, Princeton University Press, 1959

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9706/opinion/doyle.html Robert Graham, S.J.]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080212173836/https://www.catholicleague.org/piusxii_and_the_holocaust/defense.htm Defense of Jews and Others]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20051013060320/http://www.catholic.com/library/HOW_Pius_XII_PROTECTED_JEWS.asp Catholic Answers: How Pius XII Protected Jews]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Graham, Robert A.}}

Category:1912 births

Category:1997 deaths

Category:20th-century American Jesuits

Category:20th-century American Roman Catholic theologians

Category:Historians of the Catholic Church

Category:People from Sacramento, California

Category:People from Los Gatos, California

Category:University of Geneva alumni

Category:Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies alumni

Category:20th-century American historians

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:American male non-fiction writers

Category:Catholics from California

Category:American expatriates in Switzerland

Category:Historians from California