Prologue: Sede Vacante
When the dust of the universe finally settled, Father Vincente Mariani looked back at this day and realised he was mistaken. What mattered to him at the time would prove trivial, and what seemed trivial would in fact be a harbinger of peractum est. And the events of the day, as devastating as they seemed, were just the beginning of a long trail through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
The day began brightly enough, with sun and fried eggs on the small patio at the rear of his cottage, a bracing walk around the shops; chatting and blessing as he wove through the women in their faded best, laughing with the men and artists in frock coats and football shirts; and penultimately, but gloriously, a celebration of Mass in his small church high in the Italian hills, just fifty kilometres north of Rome.