Lord of the World could be considered a kind of inversion of Left Behind. The triumphalist fantasy of Benson’s apocalypse is milder, but it’s there: all Abrahamic competitors—Protestants, Muslims and Jews—succumb to Felsenburgh’s great charms, leaving Catholics to stand alone against secularism. In Lord of the World, Catholics, in fact, are like Jews, oppressed by sumptuary laws and pogroms, eventually forced to practice in secret and finally suffering annihilation.
This romantic vision may explain the novel’s appeal to early 20th century Catholics. But the question is what Pope Francis sees in it. Some commentators wonder whether he harbors apocalyptic yearnings, though it’s more likely that Benson has articulated some of the pope’s own ideological concerns. In that 2013 homily, Pope Francis explained how Lord of the World illustrated the dangers of “adolescent progressivism”—the idea that at any crossroads it’s always better to abandon the traditions of the past.
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