The Pope is dying. In the catacombs of San Domatilla, deep beneath the streets of Rome, a militant group of disaffected priests are urged to wage a new Inquisition. As the priest Michael Flaherty accepts a new appointment to the Vatican department run by the African-American cardinal J. Arthur Thomas, he enters a state within a state where priests vie for influence and power. A former US Marine, Flaherty finds himself in a different kind of war -...