The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

People had died for him, they had deserved a saint, and a tinge of bitterness spread across his mind for their sake that God hadn’t thought fit to send them one.

I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead—soon he wouldn’t even be a memory—perhaps after all he was not at the moment afraid of damnation—even the fear of pain was in the background.