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CONCLAVE

Heavy, heavy on Church politics, tons of descriptive padding—and just the ticket for a wide-eyed audience.

Tobin (The Wisdom of St. Patrick, not reviewed) speculates about what might happen when a conclave gathers in Rome to elect a new pope.

Timothy John Cardinal Mulrennan, Roman Catholic Archbishop for Newark, sees the late pope as a deeply spiritual man, perhaps a saint, even though many American Catholics, like Tim’s Christian folksinger sister, opposed his unyielding voice for a male-dominated church and against abortion. Cardinal Mulrennan flies to Rome on the same plane as devout billionaire philanthropist Frances Xavier Darragh, who has been nominated by Cardinal Henry Vennholme as a Gentleman of His Holiness, one of the highest papal honors a layman can receive. Darragh has his eye as well on becoming an overnight cardinal; after all, it’s happened to men of wealth and stature and good family in the past. He’s a key figure in the Evangelium Christi, an ultraconservative Catholic lay movement that Mulrennan has cold-shouldered for 40 years. Tobin’s retelling of Tim’s life as a priest packs in all the Catholic Church’s well-known schisms and events of the past four decades, then just for good measure gives Tim a brother who died in the Vietnam. As even the late pope knew, Mulrennan is not without sin, despite his superb gift for organizing church business while serving the pope in the Curia Romana. Darragh, though feeling unclean, has slipped a bribe to sleazy tabloid columnist Harry Benjamin to report on Mulrennan’s condoning his gay brother’s homosexuality, his (unconsummated?) affair with dazzling Rachel Séredi while bishop in Jackson City, Missouri, and his bedding of “foreign whores.” Now machinations within the conclave require that Mulrennan stand up and oppose those who would undermine the Holy See’s positions. With the original front-runner for new pope dead, who will be front-runner now?

Heavy, heavy on Church politics, tons of descriptive padding—and just the ticket for a wide-eyed audience.

Pub Date: July 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-312-87352-2

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Forge

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001

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CONCLAVE

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

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THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942

ISBN: 0060652934

Page Count: 53

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943

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