Through qualitative analysis of ecclesiastical sources, including those newly available in the Vatican Apostolic Archive for Pius XII's pontificate, this project will investigate Catholic appreciation for the American “experiment in ordered liberty” during the early Cold War. By asking why, and to what extent, Catholic leaders, in both Rome and the US, supported America's self-restyling as a "nation under God," the project prompts a rethinking of Rome and Washington's mutual influence in the crucial decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council. De Stradis proposes that their convergence on a religiously defined conception of democracy had a lasting impact on both.