The Accidental Pope. - Review - book review

National Catholic Reporter, June 15, 2001 by JOHN L. Jr. ALLEN

Ray Flynn's novel The Accidental Pope (St. Martin's Press), co-written with Robin Moore of French Connection fame, is a quirky, if entertaining, addition to the papal potboiler genre.

The novel opens with a conclave after the death of John Paul II. Without betraying too much of what is already a fairly thin plot, the new pope is a breath of fresh air, but his tell-it-like-it-is style wins few friends among stuffy Vatican powerbrokers.

Flynn then has his pope fall victim to a conspiracy involving the Orthodox church and Africa that is, frankly, bizarre. By this time, however, the pope has forever left his imprint.

Flynn is a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, and one would expect such a novel to be peppered with insider references -- which it is, assuming the insider hails from the United States. In the Vatican according to Flynn, only American reporters ever break any stories, and only English-speaking prelates make anything happen. The new pope takes as his secretary the rector of the North American College, and Flynn barely bothers disguising the real-life occupant of that job, Msgr. Timothy Dolan.

The other hero of the book is the populist, plainspoken U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, bedeviled by small-minded State Department bureaucrats. They are forever trying to hobble the ambassador, mostly by spreading malicious gossip about his drinking habits. This ex-post-facto settling of scores is understandable, but wears thin quickly.

Still, the plot of The Accidental Pope is just wacky enough that it keeps the reader turning pages, and every now and then one wishes the Holy See would be more open to some of Flynn's earnest American common sense.

John L. Allen Jr. is NCR's Vatican correspondent.