Papabile: The Man Who Would Be Pope

By Michael J. Farrell

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 082451730X
• ISBN13: 9780824517304
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Crossroad
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

An excellent and thoughtful thriller

I have always enjoyed Michael Farrell's work as a journalist and commentator. It was not surprising to see that he had turned to fiction writing, and this is an excellent first novel.It is hard to find well-written, intelligent espionage fiction these days. When is the next book coming out?

PAPABILE is as serious an attempt to face a dilemma of conscience

PAPABILE: The Man Who Would Be Pope, by Michael J. Farrell, Crossroad, 1998. For many years we've been reading Michael Farrell in the National Catholic Reporter. There was a suspicion that he was cloaking vast erudition in a veil of edgy humor and pungent style. Over the years, his articles on various aspects of current religion, from Zarathustrianism to Buddhism to Vedanta, betrayed a subterranean religious strength. But, whether because it was of his own interest, or the major concern of the top-class paper for which he wrote and of which he is now editor, Roman Catholicism was his major concern. Several years ago he began to do a regular humor page under the enigmatic headline SIC! Since then, each week, on receiving the paper (NCR) in the mail, our reading friends (including professorial colleagues), like ourselves, first turn to look for the SIC! page. It is there that one finds the flair and verve which distinguish Farrell's writingWhen word of Farrell's novel, Papabile, leaked (to borrow from the current lexicon of tabloid-laden political jargon) there was a ready readership in our home, and among fellow-readers.Papabile is more than a good novel; it is a great experience. It is a book about faith, a quest of fidelity. The muscular Christianity of it, the non-trendy piety, the torment of religious probing at its deepest, bespeak a Dostoyeskian torment. Others have noted the headlong rushing stream of the story. But, no matter how gripping, it is not the story that matters. It is the agony of what Victor Frankl called "man's search for meaning." It is a given that readers, like the protagonist, are true to their convictions. What is not a given is which, among conflicting claims, is deserving of conviction and fidelity. Papabile neither preaches nor teaches; it airs the raw anxiety of a soul seared and torn apart by conflicting polar fidelity-claims. To believe or not to believe, that is the question. Papabile is as serious an attempt to portray the dilemma as one is likely to find in our time. Denis (Ph.D.) and Marlene Hickey

The drama of a conscience that can't believe or not believe.

An idealistic young man becomes a fervent communist. They ask him to become a model priest and infiltrate the church. He does. And a bishop. The plot thickens deliciously. He is an idealist, he is pulled by the faith he abhors, he oscillates between communist and priest. The lure of the book is the surgical precision with which Farrell describes each temptation to believe and not believe. Either one becomes emotionally possible. I found the depth and precision deeply satisfying. In a strange way, Farrell frees the reader by giving better and worse reasons for whatever position s/he holds. I couldn't put it down, even after the book was safely back on my shelf.