The Vatican, American Catholics and the Struggle for Palestine, 1917-1958: A Study of Cold War Roman Catholic Transnationalism

The modern relationship between the Vatican and the state of Israel is rooted in a much deeper history of relations between Judaism and Christianity. In the main, this relationship was fraught with tensions and animosity, as early Christian writers chastised and demonized Judaism, ensconcing a hostility that endured for centuries. The advent of political Zionism in the nineteenth century renewed Roman Catholic fears of a Jewish-dominated Palestine, where religious sites sacred to Catholics would fall under the political jurisdiction of a Zionist state. In 1904, Pope Pius X granted an audience to the prominent Zionist Theodor Herzl, in which he reminded his guest that the Roman Catholic Church could never endorse or support the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine. This was to remain the essence of papal policy on Palestine for decades to come. This study examines the relationship between the Vatican and Zionism from the Balfour Declaration (1917) to the creation of Israel in 1948, as well as Vatican attempts to constrain the nascent state in the years after its birth. More specifically, it considers the transnational nature of Roman Catholic responses to Zionism and the creation of Israel. The Vatican was supported in its anti-Zionist stance by an international network of national Catholic hierarchies, lay Catholic organizations and an active Catholic press. Leading this international Roman Catholic lobby against Zionism were the Catholic bishops of the United States. From the 1920s through the 1950s, American Catholic leaders had become crucial intermediaries in the relationship between Washington and the Vatican. Speaking as both loyal American citizens and as devout Roman Catholics, the bishops were uniquely positioned to transmit the Vatican’s policy objectives to the American government. The American bishops were also instrumental in advocating Vatican positions on Zionism at the United Nations, evidence of the importance of the American Catholic Church, and its various organs, in disseminating the positions of the Vatican to the international community. Through an examination of a comprehensive range of primary materials, this study demonstrates that an understanding of the Vatican’s relationship with Zionism and the nascent Israeli state must take into account the transnational Roman Catholic consensus on the future of Palestine, an advocacy led by American Catholics, who represented the leading edge of Vatican attempts to shape the future of Palestine

Dif-in-dif estimators of multiplicative treatment effects

We consider a difference-in-differences setting with a continuous outcome, such as wages or expenditure. The standard practice is to take its logarithm and then interpret the results as an approximation of the multiplicative treatment effect on the original outcome. We argue that a researcher should rather focus on the non-transformed outcome when discussing causal inference. Furthermore, it is preferable to use a non-linear estimator, because running OLS on the log-linearized model might confound distributional and mean changes. We illustrate the argument with an original empirical analysis of the impact of the UK Educational Maintenance Allowance on households' expenditure

No free lunch, buddy: housing transfers and informal care later in life

Previous empirical literature on intergenerational transfers of assets and services has mostly focused on the contemporary exchange or on the bequest motive. Differently, using Italian data, we provide evidence that parents who help their adult children with housing at the time of marriage are rewarded by higher chances of receiving informal care later in life. We show that this relation is robust to controlling for a wide set of individual and family characteristics and we discuss three possible explanations: (i) increased geographical distance; (ii) parents' reinforcement through support for the production of grandchildren; (iii) correlation with future nancial transfers

Supervivencia de una pequeña población trasladada de Procolobus kirkii en la isla de Pemba

A survey to evaluate the distribution of Procolobus kirkii on Pemba island (Tanzania) was conducted, 20 years after they had been translocated from Zanzibar in the Ngezi forest park. A team of both expert and trained observers, guided by the authors, censused 68.3 linear km of forest, corresponding to an estimated area of 3.5 km2 (63.6%) of the protected Ngezi forested area of 5.5 km2. Nineteen groups of Cercopithecus aethiops were observed, with a total of 166 animals and an estimated density of 47.43 individuals per km2, and only one troop of Procolobus kirkii. Supplemented by interviewing the local people we obtained an estimate of 15–30 P. kirkii, including a small troop outside the protected area. This small population survived but did not increase, possibly due to adverse relations with humans.Se realizó un estudio para evaluar la distribución de Procolobus kirkii en la isla de Pemba (Tanzania), veinte años después de que fuera trasladada desde Zanzíbar al Parque Ngezi. Un equipo de observadores expertos y entrenados, guiados por los autores, efectuó un censo a lo largo de 68,3 km lineales de bosque, correspondiente a un área estimada de 3,5 km2 (63,6%) del área protegida del bosque de Ngezi de 5,5 km2. Se observaron 19 grupos de Cercopithecus aethiops, con un total de 166 animales y una densidad estimada de 47,43 individuos/km2, y sólo un grupo de Procolobus kirkii. Complementando los datos con entrevistas a la población local se obtuvo una estimación de 15–30 ejemplares de P. kirkii, incluyendo un pequeño grupo localizado fuera del área protegida. Este pequeño grupo sobrevivía pero no se incrementaba en número, posiblemente debido a las relaciones adversas con los humanos

Genome- wide analyses reveal population structure and identify candidate genes associated with tail fatness in local sheep from a semi- arid area

Under a climate change perspective, the genetic make-up of local livestock breeds showing adaptive traits should be explored and preserved as a priority. We used genotype data from the ovine 50 k Illumina BeadChip for assessing breed autozygosity based on runs of homozygosity (ROH) and fine-scale genetic structure and for detecting genomic regions under selection in 63 Tunis ia n sheep samples. The average genomic inbreeding coefficients based on ROH were estimated at 0.017, 0.021, and 0.024 for Barbarine (BAR, n = 26), Noire de Thibar (NDT, n = 23), and Queue fine de l'Ouest (QFO, n = 14) breeds, respectively. The genomic relationships among individuals based on identity by state (IBS) distance matrix highlighted a recent introgression of QFO into the BAR and a genetic differentiation of NDT samples, possibly explained by past introgression of Europe an gene pools. Genome-wide scan for ROH across breeds and within the BAR sample set identified an outstanding signal on chromosome 13 (46.58–49.61 Mbp). These results were confirmed using FST index, differentiating fat vs. thin-tailed individuals. Candidate genes under selection pressure (CDS2, PROKR1, and BMP2) were associated to lipid storage and probably preferentially selected in fat-tailed BAR animals. Our findings suggest paying more attention to preserve the genetic integrity and adaptive alleles of local sheep breeds