Visitation

In 2025, in a Europe swamped by immigration from the east, and the apocalyptic vision of a Eurabia not that far away, the Church, as so often before, should be a bulwark. But Europe is tired of a Church tainted by paedophile scandals and their cover up, and tightly controlled by a Vatican bureaucracy. Its insistence on a celibate priesthood denies the Eucharist to millions on every continent. The French Pope Nicholas, the most innovative since Pope John XXIII , has made a breakthrough , but is killed on his way to Rome Airport, where a plane carrying a Scottish Archbishop has been the victim of a terrorist attack. Every Archdiocese and Diocese in the world waits to see if a new Pope will also move forward or if the Barque of Peter will once more be a rudderless derelict, as it was under Benedict and Simon. The Scottish Archdiocese has also lost its leader, and its problems are compounded at the worst possible time by the appearance of an anomalous fifth century corpse, and a miraculous cure. Its new leader is a retired auxiliary Bishop, plucked from retirement , who has to deal with this problem, as well as see his flock, without a great deal of optimism, through the Nine Days of Mourning and the Conclave which will elect a new Pope. It is set in the Glasgow of 2025, with King Harry on the throne, and with a new and charismatic local politician running the City, now practically strangled by traffic. A new and effective development is being held up by the presence of a revered Catholic church in the centre of it. It is a city with Asian and Polish ethnic components, and with a new Tanzanian element. It is a city where the Fisheries Protection blimp anchors in its centre and in which the currency includes £15 pound notes . But it is also a city in which two corrosive elements eat into the lives of its ordinary people. One, of course, is the world-wide problem of drugs. The other is the still surviving problem of religious sectarianism. Against this background, how the old Bishop deals with his local problems is a paradigm of how all his brother Bishops will have to come to terms with one of the most dramatic changes in Church history since its foundation. Except that his most demanding problem is that of a fifteen hundred year old miracle-working incorruptible body .But the 268th Pope is something completely new .He is both within the European ethos of the Papacy, and outwith it. He is a Pope who might easily transform the Church and indeed the future of the world . He is a Visitation.