"The Pope's Battalions considers Santamaria's role and influence from the late 1930s - when he was a young Catholic Actionist in Melbourne - to his death in 1998. This prominent Cold War warrior founded the secretive National Civic Council and was the brains behind the Democratic Labor Party. His militant political Catholicism was central to the traumatic mid-1950s split in the ALP which kept the party out of office federally until the 1970s."--BOOK JACKET.