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Pope Gregory XVII has spent a lifetime quietly serving the Church he loves-until he announces a prophecy so alarming that it threatens to tear the Vatican apart. Terrified, the Vatican cardinals imprison him in a monastery. Is he mad, as they believe, or is it all an elaborate plot? An old friend of the pope sets out on a risky quest to find out. On the way, he discovers the power of love and faith, while terrorists and politicians use every deadly and unholy means to stop him.Tags
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What would happen, if the members of the Roman Curia discovered that the Pope was about to state publicly that he had received a private revelation that the world was about to end? Pope Gregory XVII claims to have received a private revelation of the end of the world - an apocalypse coming not in some distant future but at any moment. Is he a madman, as his cardinals suspect, a mystic, or a fanatic grasping for an unholy power?
2306 The Clowns of God a novel by Morris West (read 15 Jul 1990) This 1981 novel deals with a pope Gregory XVII who has a vision and is pressured to abdicate. The story tells of what he did thereafter. The first part deals with Carl Medelius, an ex-Jesuit who teaches in a German university and is asked by the ex-Pope to help him get the word out of the upcoming cataclysmic times. The book is a typical Morris West novel, with the usual strengths and weaknesses. Super-competent people who get amazing things done effortlessly, etc.
Interesting apocolypse story starting with the pope resigning because his vision of the end is more than a little uncomfortable for the rest of the hierarchy.
Written in late 70's early 80 anticipating a 3rd world war and nuclear holocaust.Interesting to read after all sorts of other things have happened - nuclear non-proliferation treaty, 911, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all sorts of other political events that were not even thought about at the time of writing.
Theme for summer 2009, about the abdication of a pope and predictions of a coming world war and apocalypse. Written in 1981 during the Cold War. Slow and deep with lots of historical, theological, and philosophical material.
Es la historia de un Papa, de comienzos del siglo XX, que al asumir el pontificado, sintiendose responsable de poner las cosas en claro en el seno de la Iglesia, prepara una enciclica en la que se jugaba su posicion, prestigio y ruburosas verdades que deberian salir a la luz. Uno de los espias de la curia del Vaticano, descubre el borrador de la citada enciclica. A partir de ese momento, comienza una encarnizada persecucion a su persona, es decir, al Papa, quien es obligado a abdicar, o renunciar al papado, y mantenido en situacion de casi incomunicado dentro de ciertos recintos del Vaticano. Con ayuda de un influyente amigo, logra salir de los muros del claustro; huye y es perseguido, la consigna es matarlo.
Dec 26, 2010Spanish
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61+ Works 7,733 Members
Morris West was born in 1916 in St Kilda, Melbourne. At the age of thirteen, he left home to study with the Christian Brothers Order in Sydney, but left in 1939 after 12 years, before taking his final vows. He was fluent in Italian and French, and taught modern languages and mathematics in New South Wales and Tasmania in his twenties. He spent show more four years code-breaking as a cipher officer in the AIF, and then for a decade he concentrated on producing and writing radio plays. West's first novel was published in 1945 and he began writing full time in the 1950s. He went to Italy were he went undercover with Father Mario Borelli, who was working with street urchins, and wrote The Children of the Sun, published in 1957. In 1959, following six months as Vatican correspondent for The Daily Mail, he published The Devil's Advocate, which won the William Heinemann Award of the Royal Society, the National Brotherhood Award of the National Council of Christians and Jews as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Award. Shoes of a Fisherman, the first of The Papal Series, which included The Clowns of God, Lazarus and Eminence, won the Best-Sellers Paperback of the Year Award in 1965. West helped to found the Australian Society of Authors, was chairman of the National Book Council, chairman of the National Library of Australia and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. He was made member of the order of Australia (MBE) in 1985 and officer of the order of Australia (AO) in 1997. Apart from writing novels, West also wrote screenplays, radio dramas, plays and was also an artist. Translated into twenty-seven languages, his works have sold more that sixty million copies. He also wrote an account on his spiritual journey, A View From the Ridge, published at the end of 1996. Morris West died while working at his desk on 9th October 1999. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Original title
- The Clowns of God
- Original publication date
- 1981
- Important places
- Vatican City
- Epigraph
- "Who knows but the world may end tonight?" - Robert Browning
- Dedication
- For my loved ones with my heart's thanks
- First words
- Prologue: In the seventh year of his reign, two days before his sixty-fifth birthday, in the presence of a full consistory of Cardinals, Jean Marie Barette, Pope Gregory XVII, signed an instrument of abdication, took off the ... (show all)Fisherman's ring, handed his seal to the Cardinal Camerlengo and made a curt speech of farewell.
Chapter One: She looked like a country woman, stout, apple-cheeked, dressed in coarse woollen stuff, her wispy grey hair trailing from under a straw hat. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Somehow it sounded like a prayer.
- Original language
- English
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- Members
- 611
- Popularity
- 47,573
- Reviews
- 8
- Rating
- (3.88)
- Languages
- 9 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 41
- ASINs
- 15
