The daring exploits of Jesuit missionaries like St. Francis Xavier and St. Isaac Jogues have served as inspiration for notable works of historical fiction such as Shusaku Endo’s classic “Silence” (1966) and the more recent award-winning novel “Child of These Tears” (2025) by Prof. Molly McNett. But what about fiction that deals with members of the Society of Jesus working in an institution at the heart of Christendom, instead of undeveloped countryside and forests of Japan, North America or beyond?
A new work of fiction, set in mid-19th-century Europe during the tumultuous time of the Second French Republic, explores a Jesuit-led narrative of a different flavor than those of the missionaries we have become familiar with.
Houston-born Jesuit priest Fr. Joseph Carola has published his debut novel with Sophia Institute Press. Titled “Dragons: A Roman Requiem,” Fr. Carola’s novel follows the fictitious Fr. Luigi Colonna and his companions as they serve the pope and pursue various scientific studies. Their days of relative peace become disrupted, however, amid the growing political turmoil that comes to threaten their very way of life, and the “dragons” are, perhaps, not quite what you would expect.
Long before his foray into the annals of historical fiction, Fr. Carola was a master of homiletics, a teacher well-versed in theology and the wider humanities. Among his popular nonfiction books are the “Conformed to Christ Crucified” series of meditations published by Midwest Theological Forum. No stranger to the subtleties of linguistics, Fr. Carola can speak five languages, including English, and read in several more. He currently serves on the faculty of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he is the director of the department of patristic theology.
Fr. Carola recently spoke with the Jesuit Media Lab about “Dragons: A Roman Requiem,” offering us insights into his inspiration and his craft, for which we are truly grateful.
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John Tuttle: With your extensive work in homiletics, you have spent a lot of time writing nonfiction. What motivated you to write “Dragons,” a work of historical fiction? And what inspired you most in the writing process?
Fr. Joseph Carola: When I published “Engaging the Church Fathers in Nineteenth-Century Catholicism: The Patristic Legacy of the Scuola Romana” in June 2023, I gave a copy of it to my oldest sister, who is an avid reader. She began reading it right away but soon stalled. The extended discussions of theological method did her in. I suggested that she stick to the biographical and historical sections of each chapter. But even those proved to be too much. I thought to myself, “I’d like to write something one day that my sister can read.” “Dragons: A Roman Requiem” takes the drama, history and theology of the Catholic Church in the 19th century and makes them accessible to the non-academic reader.
As my sister struggled to read my academic work, a young priest from the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Fr. Louis Cona, also encouraged me to write “Dragons.” Without his insistence, I probably would never have begun. On June 4, 2023, when I wrote the first scene of the novel, I was reading the letters of Flannery O’Connor. I discovered that she offers excellent advice to budding fiction authors. She became my mentor — one Southern Catholic author to another. Any book that she recommended, I ordered and read.
JT: Based on what you told me in an email, the identity of the “dragons” may seem counterintuitive to some Christian readers. So, who are these titular “dragons”?
JC: In 1583, Pope Gregory XIII built the Roman College to house the school that St. Ignatius of Loyola had founded in 1551. The pope’s coat of arms adorned the façade. On that coat of arms is a lone dragon without a tail. The baroque architect employed the image of that lone, tailless dragon to decorate both the exterior and interior of the building. Already in the 16th century, that dragon caused confusion. It convinced Protestants in northern Europe that Martin Luther was indeed right: The pope is the Antichrist! Catholics countered that it was not a bad dragon, not the dragon of the Apocalypse, but rather a harmless dragon, for its venomous tail had been cut off.
In the novel, the stone dragons on the façade of the college and throughout the city of Rome (they are everywhere in Rome thanks to both Pope Gregory XIII and Pope Paul V) function effectively like rather odd guardian angels. The character Fr. Giovanni Perrone explains as much to Fr. Luigi Colonna in the third chapter.
JT: Can you explain a bit about the historical context in which the story is situated?
JC: “Dragons” begins in the revolutionary year 1848 when Parisians overthrew King Louis-Philippe of the House of Orleans and established the Second French Republic. That revolutionary firestorm quickly spread across Europe and did not spare the Jesuits at the Roman College. They fled into exile in March of that year and returned to the Eternal City only two years later. The novel concludes with the Jesuits’ definitive expulsion from the college in 1873 when the Kingdom of Italy suppressed all religious houses in Rome as it had already done in previous years throughout the newly erected realm. That quarter century saw the fall of the Papal States and the dawn of the Italian kingdom — a tumultuous period, to say the least. As a historical novel, “Dragons” is 95% accurate — even down to the weather. I took some artistic liberties for the sake of the storyline with only about 5% of the novel. The protagonist and antagonist, who carry the reader throughout those historical events, are, however, fictional.
JT: For those who don’t know, what is the Roman College and, at this point in history, what are the Jesuits doing at this institution?
JC: As I mentioned above, the Roman College was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1551. It soon became the flagship school of the Jesuit order. In 1583, Pope Gregory XIII built a grand baroque complex in the heart of Rome to house it. It had a lower school (effectively a high school) and higher faculties. Roman lads studied in the former. In the latter, Jesuit scholastics and other seminarians studied philosophy and theology in preparation for the priesthood. Prior to the Jesuit order’s universal suppression in 1773, the Roman College was also a formidable institute of scientific and mathematical research. One of its professors, Fr. Christopher Clavius, devised the Gregorian calendar that we still use today. The calendar was named for Pope Gregory XIII and promulgated by him in 1582 at the Villa Mondragone — Mount Dragon! — in the Alban hills outside Rome.
JT: Has your own work influenced how the priests and their activities are portrayed in the novel?
JC: Yes, it most definitely has! Flannery O’Connor acknowledges that every character an author creates is in some way autobiographical. My work in priestly formation has inevitably influenced my writing. That is most obvious and indeed explicit in the four volumes of “Conformed to Christ Crucified.” But it is no less true of “Dragons,” I’d say. There is also another autobiographical element in the novel. “Dragons”is about Jesuit theology professors at the Roman College, which is, today, the Pontifical Gregorian University where I live and teach. Fathers Giovanni Perrone, Carlo Passaglia, Clemens Schrader and Johann Baptist Franzelin are my predecessors. They are the giants upon whose shoulders I stand. I have drawn upon my own decades-long experience at the Gregorian University in order to enhance my descriptions of them.
JT: How do you think the general public conceives of the Society of Jesus? What do people typically think of when they hear the word “Jesuit?”
JC: I hope that, when people hear the word “Jesuit” today, they think of our saints, our venerable history and our grace-filled charism. The Spiritual Exercises, an extraordinary gift that God has given to the church through our Father Ignatius, immediately come to mind. No doubt, they also think of our schools. Perhaps, too, they think of our missions in Latin America thanks to the movie “The Mission.”
In the 19th century, the word “Jesuit” often meant a sinister, black-robed fiend. Charles Dickens describes us that way. Anti-Jesuitism was a distinguishable subset in 19th-century anti-Catholicism and anticlericalism. I highlight that point in the introduction to “Engaging the Church Fathers,” and I draw upon that prejudice throughout “Dragons.” A dear friend of mine in the Jesuit order once said to me that, if Dan Brown had written “The DaVinci Code” in the 19th century, the villain would not have been an Opus Dei monk (sic!) but rather a Jesuit priest.
JT: Has literature about fictional members of the Society like Shusaku Endo’s novel “Silence,” or literature penned by fellow Jesuits like poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, influenced you? How about certain Jesuit philosophies on literary theory, such as the thought of Fr. Walter Ong or of Fr. Harold C. Gardiner?
JC: As a young Jesuit, I wanted to be a missionary in Japan. I studied Japanese in the juniorate and during my philosophical studies. I also spent a short time in Japan before being assigned to teach Spanish at our high school in Houston. I read not only “Silence,” but also other novels by Shusaku Endo. They did indeed inspire me. I have always enjoyed the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. During my final year of philosophy, I lived in community with Fr. Walter Ong and studied under him. Fr. Harold Gardiner I know only through the letters of Flannery O’Connor who, by the way, corresponded with Jesuits of my province (I entered the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus in 1980). As a young Jesuit, I knew those Jesuits quite well. Have they inspired me? Yes. I remember Fr. Ong telling us once in class to write like the authors we read. In the ensuing years, I have made every attempt to follow his advice.
JT: Many of the religious characters in your novel are steeped in prayer. You offer the public a glimpse into a somewhat restricted sector of religious life: the cloister. At one point, when one of the characters lies dying, he utters the words: “Fear is not the final word. It is Jesus.” We see this, historically, in the lives of many saints — this invoking of the holy names of Jesus and Mary. What do you think would change about the world if more of us tried living every moment of our lives as if Jesus had the final say instead of our worries?
JC: The sentence that the dying man utters comes from the spiritual writings of my novice companion and dearest friend, Fr. Raymond Fitzgerald, SJ, who died of ALS on September 17, 2016. By the end of his life, Fr. Fitzgerald lived every moment consecrated to Christ. His was a holy death. Throughout his illness, he learned with the help of God’s grace to live our Jesuit charism in its purest form: to live in complete docility to the will of God. Despite his utter disability, he trusted in the good Lord’s providence. He lived and died the companion of Jesus. May we learn from his holy example. May “Dragons” inspire its readers to do likewise: to live and die as the good Lord’s faithful companions.