A review by st_urmer
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

5.0

The main character of the novel, a fallen priest, is one of the most compelling characters I have read in a very long time. The novel opens with the unnamed Padre on the run from anticlerical forces in 1930’s Mexico. If caught, he will be executed, as have most his associates been. Losing everything he ever valued, he finds compassion and honor. He is far from perfect, but his flaws make him more human and sympathetic. The priest, and the author, couches this awakening in Roman Catholic terms, but they are much more universal values at work here. One finds, when stripped of all pomp and artifice, that the only thing truly worth anything in the world is one’s value to those around him.