The Power and the Glory

The Power and the Glory, novel by British writer Graham Greene, published in 1940. Classified as one of his four Catholic novels, it is often described as Greene’s finest work.

Greene was an experienced traveler, and the setting of this novel derives from time that he spent in Mexico in 1938, reporting on the results of official anticlericalism and persecution of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Power and the Glory opens with an Englishman living in Mexico meeting a stranger, later identified only as the whisky priest, planning to board a ship leaving the capital city of Tabasco state. When a boy asks for help for his sick mother, the priest goes to her, though it means he will miss his passage on the ship. The whisky priest, an alcoholic who has broken most of his vows, is the sole remaining active priest in the state. He is being hunted by the lieutenant, a police official who believes that by ridding the state of priests, he is freeing it from superstition and corruption. Other priests have been executed or, like Padre José, made to marry. The lieutenant decides to take a hostage from each village to force the villagers to expose the priest he hunts and to execute the hostage if the villagers fail to give up the priest. The whisky priest continues to travel, trying to both remain hidden and minister to the people.

Discover how ordinary objects work, and expand your understanding of the familiar.

SIGN UP

" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">

Thank you for signing up!"

Back to homepage

By clicking "Sign Up", you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

The whisky priest returns to his home parish, where his former lover, Maria, lives with their daughter, Brigitta. Though Brigitta despises him, Maria shelters him. The next morning at dawn the priest holds a mass for the villagers, but the police come hunting for him, arriving just as the mass finishes. The lieutenant questions the whisky priest without recognizing him, but he is persuaded that he is Maria’s husband. When the lieutenant decides to take a hostage, the whisky priest tries without success to volunteer to be the hostage. The whisky priest continues on his way. When he asks a mestizo for directions to the town of Carmen, the mestizo insists on accompanying him, though the priest is certain that the man only wants to turn him in. The priest escapes from the mestizo and returns to the capital city, where he is caught by the police for possessing brandy and jailed. He tells the other prisoners that he is a priest and ministers to them. In the morning, the lieutenant, still not recognizing him, gives him money when he is released.

Eventually the whisky priest reaches a neighboring state where Catholicism is tolerated, and here for a time he lives in ease, well-fed and welcomed. Eventually, however, the mestizo finds him and tells him that an injured gringo back in Tabasco state is dying and needs a priest. The priest goes with the mestizo, but the man refuses confession and dies without absolution. The lieutenant then arrives to take the priest into custody. Though the lieutenant agrees to let the whisky priest confess to Padre José before being executed, Padre José fears a trap and refuses. The priest is executed, but a boy in the village is persuaded to see priests rather than police as heroes.

The book is a Christian parable, pitting faith against 20th-century materialism. The Power and the Glory achieves the comfortable combination of a thriller plot with the high, moral ambiguity of a modern drama.