The Power and the Glory chronicles the plight of a nameless priest who, for eight years, has continued to say Mass and administer the sacraments, even though Mexico's revolutionary government has outlawed these practices. The novel opens with the
whiskey priest, waiting for a boat that will take him out of the capital city. While talking to a man named Mr. Tench, he is summoned to a dying
woman's house and thus misses his boat. He hides out in a barn on the estate of a plantation owner, befriending the owner's daughter. All throughout the story, he is portrayed as a wandering priest. Forced to move on, he heads for a village in which he used to live and work as pastor. There he
meets Maria with whom he has had a brief affair, and Brigida, his illegitimate daughter. He spends the
night in the village and wakes before dawn to say Mass for the villagers. The
lieutenant—a sworn enemy of all religion—arrives at the end of Mass, leading a group of policemen in search of the priest, and the priest goes out to the town square to face his enemy. No one in the village turns him in, however, and the lieutenant does not realize that he has found the man he is looking for. Instead, the lieutenant takes a hostage, whom he says he will execute if he finds that the villagers have been lying to him about not having seen the wanted man. The lieutenant, who believes that the new government can help mitigate poverty, despises the Church for ministering to spiritual needs while ignoring poverty. The priest, however, believes that faith in the Church's teachings provides hope for the poor and oppressed. On the way to the town of Carmen, the whiskey priest meets this mestizo who, uninvited, accompanies the priest on his journey. Very soon it becomes clear that he is an untrustworthy figure, and most likely interested in following the priest so that he can turn him in and collect the reward money. The priest, after much evasion, later admits that he is, indeed, a priest. But the mestizo, who has become stricken with fever by the second day of their journey together, does not have the strength to follow the priest when he deviates from the road to Carmen, where he knows he will surely be recognized and captured. The priest then backtracks to the capital city. When all the priests in the region left the priesthood, the whiskey priest was reputedly the only one to have kept his faith—although he is still very obviously a coward of a fellow. Now more heavily disguised, wearing a drill suit, he tries to procure a
bottle of wine so he can say Mass. He meets a beggar who takes him to a hotel and introduces him to a man who says he can supply him the wine. The man arrives and sells the priest a bottle of wine and a bottle of brandy. But, taking advantage of the priest's offer to share a drink with him, the man proceeds to drink the entire bottle of wine, thwarting the priest's original plan. The priest then leaves the hotel but is apprehended by a state official with the bottle of brandy. After a lengthy chase through the streets of the town, during which the priest attempts to take refuge at the house of an ex-priest, Padre Jose, he is captured and taken to jail. In the jail he has several conversations with other prisoners, admitting to them that he is a priest. A pious woman, in jail for having religious articles in her home, argues with him. He is ordered to clean out the prison cells and while at this chore he meets the mestizo again. But for some strange reason the mestizo decides not to betray him to the authorities. The priest has a face-to-face encounter with the lieutenant but goes unrecognized and is even allowed to go free. The priest spends a night at the abandoned family estate and then moves on to a village where no one lives anymore. He meets an Indian woman whose son has been shot and killed by a certain gringo, an American outlaw also on the run from police. He then accompanies the woman ...
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