Myth Buster

Last summer I was chatting with the old brother who serves as porter for the Jesuit house of biblical studies in Rome. I told him that I had heard a rumor that the cardinal prefect of one of the oldest basilicas in Rome had fathered a child. He paused for a moment, and then replied (without a trace of irony), “It should be true, but it’s not.”

Michael Carroll has written a lively—and often brilliant—book that launches a frontal assault on...

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