Hadrian VII

Contrite priests suddenly bestow Holy Orders on a wretched failure who was expelled from the seminary for lack of a true vocation. He is soon in Rome with his bishop to elect a new Pope. The stymied conclave elects the dedicated new priest: Hadrian VII. The new Pope decides to sell Vatican art treasures to finance feeding the world's poor. He smokes on the throne and entertains old friends like his landlady and new ones like a seminarian who is having a hard go of it until an assassin puts an end to Hadrian VII.2 women, 26 men

Frederick Rolfe (1860-1913), also known as Baron Corvo, was born of a respectable Dissenting family in Cheapside. He converted to Catholicism when he was twenty-six and attempted to enter the priesthood. After he was ejected from the seminary, on the grounds of his extremely 'difficult' temperament and eccentricities, he pledged himself to two decades of celibacy and proceeded to write several semi-autobiographical novels. His relations with his publishers and friends, on whose beneficence he relied, were frequently fractious, and he died poor at his preferred restaurant in Venice.