During a dark night, in and out of a light sleep, a nameless anguish oppresses the Holy Father’s chest. A shadow moves among the curtains… is it God the Father in person appearing to his vicar, or is it the Devil? Is it a dream or has the moment arrived for the dreaded passage? Then a booming, deep voice disperses the doubt and the shadow becomes light. The logical, fundamental and ancient dialogue that arises between God and the Pope deals with matters of faith, unavowable deviations, perversions and violence of the Church which, in the final analysis, are the deviations, perversions and violence of human nature. The Pope addresses the latter in an erudite attempt to justify them. Among the explosions of verbal colour and a vein of delightful irony, the reader is mostly “spectator” of a duel between antagonistic insights, packed with dialectical elegance and incisive cultured attacks that, however, are always astutely balanced. Reading this book is intriguing, but one must get into it slowly, then go on until one is immersed in the brilliant literary device of its ending that is also an authentic plot twist.