EXCERPT

He did have to admit, though, that Monsignor Lombardo cut a striking figure. He was a handsome man, slim, with manicured silver hair, and he wore his black cassock and purple sash well. Rimless glasses conveyed the suggestion of intellectual depth. Many of the women had preened when he entered, including some of the nuns.

The priest reminded Piza of the television personality Bishop Fulton Sheen, whose show his mother never missed when it aired in the 1950s. The bishop had a powerful, melodic voice, and was a bona fide Catholic superstar. The comparison to Bishop Sheen hit a wall as soon as Monsignor Lombardo began to speak.

“Thank you, Mother John,” he rasped.

Holy crap! It’s Vito Corleone in disguise.

He would later learn the priest’s gravelly delivery was the result of years of chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes, a vice allegedly on equal footing with his partiality to single malt scotch.

“It’s a pleasure to be here with all of you today,” the Godfather said.