Marie José of Belgium Claretta Petacci, claimed in her diary that in 1937 the then princess and wife of the heir to the throne tried and failed to seduce the dictator at a beach resort near Rome. However, Mussolini's son, Romano, claims that the princess and dictator entered into a sexual relationship. In 1943, the Crown Princess involved herself in vain attempts to arrange a separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States; her interlocutor from the Vatican was Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, a senior diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI. Her attempts were not sponsored by the king and Umberto was
The Dictator Pope and distanced themselves from his critique of Pope Francis. The Order later expelled Sire on November 19, 2018. The Polish edition of "The Dictator Pope" (titled: "Papież dyktator. Skrywana historia pontyfikatu papieża Franciszka") is to be released somehow in the middle of November 2018. The Dictator Pope The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy () is a biography of Pope Francis authored by the Anglo–French historian H. J. A. Sire under the pseudonym "Marcantonio Colonna" (the name of a Catholic admiral who fought at the Battle of Lepanto). Published initially in Italian, and later in English, the