BEHIND THE BOOK

The Secret Cardinal is at its core a jailbreak thriller; the story of an attempt to free a man unjustly imprisoned. But stepping back to view the full scope of my fifth Nolan Kilkenny thriller, you will discover a real church-state conflict that affects over two and a half billion people.

Both the title character and the situation between China and the Vatican are based on fact. The difficulties between the world’s most populous nation and the tiny European city-state began when the communists took control of China and immediately set out to eradicate religion. Tyrannical regimes fear religion because it supposes a power greater than the state, and the communists of China are no different in this regard. Within five years of their takeover, the communists realized that they could not force the populace to renounce their faiths and changed tactics. If they could not eliminate religion, they would instead control it. Today, there are five legal religions in China, and each is controlled by a patriotic association with the sole purpose to ensure that the messages the faithful receive in their temples and churches mirror the pronouncements of Beijing. Patriotic atheists control religion in China.

Pope John Paul II created four secret cardinals during his reign, eventually revealing three while taking the identity of his fourth and final cardinal to the grave. The first of these secret cardinals was Kung Pin-Mei, the Bishop of Shanghai. Kung endured over thirty years of imprisonment and abuse for refusing to renounce his faith, and was a secret cardinal for over a decade before he was finally exiled to the United States and the pope decided it was safe to create Kung a cardinal publicly.

I first learned of secret cardinals and the situation between China and the Vatican from a tribute given by Sen. Joseph Lieberman in March of 2000 to mark the passing of Cardinal Kung. I was both inspired by Kung’s example and astonished at the scale of religious persecution in China.

At the end of The Secret Cardinal, you’ll find a section of facts about the history of conflict between China and the Vatican that includes an entry about Pope Benedict XVI’s letter of June 30, 2007 to the Catholics of China. Sadly, my novel deals with an evolving story and events continue to unfold.

In September of 2007, just before my novel went on sale, the Chinese government enacted a law that gave it sole authority over the reincarnation of Buddhist lamas—Tibetan Buddhism’s most revered holy men cannot reincarnate without approval of the state and cannot reincarnate outside of China. And just a week before the newly elected bishop of Beijing was ordained by the state, a Roman Catholic bishop died in state custody and was cremated and interred within hours. The Secret Cardinal may be a work of fiction, but a great deal of it is real.