Quickly drawing open the narrow black curtain on his side of the cubicle, the priest saw the man he'd confessed. He stood an instant near the confessional, looking back, his face tortured, then stumbled blindly away past the papal altar toward the marble stairs that led down to the crypts and the tomb of the First Apostle Simon, who became St. Peter. And the full horror of what he had heard in the cold darkness struck the priest. For he saw, from the cassock he wore and the rosary crucifix in his hand, that the mad-man he had just confessed was, like simself, a young priest. from the prologue of The Last Pope

ISBN: 9781402202445