Blaise Meredith is an English priest based in Rome, who has been diagnosed with cancer. In the limited time he has left, he is given the task to investigate a request to declare a man named Giacomo Nerone to be a saint. Nerone's past has many gaps in it, which makes it harder to investigate, and some of the activities that are not in question include the fact that he lived with a woman he didn't marry and they had a child together before Nerone was killed by Communist partisans.
Blaise Meredith, a somber man, accepts the task to be the Devil's Advocate, which involves digging through the evidence and subjecting it to the severest scrutiny. We learn that there is also a Postulator who builds the case for sainthood. Meredith travels to the poor town in southern Italy where Nerone lived the last year or so of his life, and he meets with the local priest (who has his own ethical lapses), the local doctor (who is a Jew who has never been fully accepted by the community), a rich Countess (who seems quite unhappy), as well as with the woman who had a child (who is now an adolescent) with Nerone. Time is ticking away: Meredith's symptoms worsen, but he experiences some of the greatest friendship in his life during this process.
I found this to be a compelling drama with many distinct personalities and intrigues, along with narrations of how the Fascists, as well as bands of Communists, affected the lives of these very poor people during the war.
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