Dell’Aqua held on to his temper. “You’re ordered to leave. Or you will be excommunicated.” “Jesuit threats are meaningless, Eminence. You don’t speak with the Tongue of God, you never have, you never will. You’re not soldiers of Christ. You serve a Pope, Eminence, a man. You’re politicians, men of the earth, men of the fleshpots with your pagan silks and lands and power and riches and influence. The Lord Jesus Christ came to earth in the guise of a simple man who scratched and went barefoot and stank. I will never leave—nor will my Brothers!”

