Conclave
A Novel
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Born and raised in suburban New Jersey, Timothy John Mulrennan has known since childhood a deep and abiding faith in his God and his Church that leads him to a career as a priest-and propels him onto the stage of world events that include the Second Vatican Council, the Vietnam War, and the election of the first Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic church of the third millennium. Along the way he encounters some of the most remarkable characters in contemporary fiction: Henry Martin Vennholme, leader of the conservative lay movement called Evangelium Christi, and Mulrennan's bitterest enemy within the church . . . Rachel Seredi, a beautiful artist from Hungary who falls in love with Bishop Mulrennan and gives him the greatest gift a woman ever could...Cardinal Leandro Biagi, a wily and urbane politician who would be at home in the time of the Medicis and Borgias...and Jaime de Guzman, the Archbishop of Manila and longtime friend of Tim Mulrennan's, the one man who speaks in the American's defense during the divided conclave and who pays the ultimate price for his honesty and faith in God.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Whenever a Catholic priest shows up in a TV movie, it's an odds-on bet the plot involves sex or the seal of the confessional. The same holds true for this novel about American Cardinal Timothy Mulrennan, which is unabashedly reminiscent of the mid-century classic The Cardinal. Favored with the friendship of John Paul II, Mulrennan finds himself in line to succeed the Polish pope after his death. But he is also a lightning rod who draws the attacks of the Church's conservative wing; during the conclave in 2002 to elect a new pope, Mulrennan is attacked in the press by agents of Evangelium Christi, a conservative movement headed by another American, Cardinal Vennholme. Mulrennan has a couple of dirty secrets in his past, and their revelation would be a lot more dramatic if author Tobin hadn't deliberately stacked the deck in his main character's favor. When Mulrennan is blessed with visions of former popes or when his chief opponent is explicitly compared to Judas Iscariot, there's little doubt how the reader is supposed to feel. In much the same way that all hard questions become rhetorical when answered by blind faith, all questions of character and motivation become moot here. In Tobin's Vatican, there's very little of the crackling politics and vital theological debate that made Malachi Martin's The Final Conclave such a compelling read.
