Grahame Greene and his Roman Missal

We are delighted to publish a paper by Richard Challoner entitled Disbelieving the Unbelief: A Glimpse Into the Catholic Faith of Graham Greene which provides a fascinating insight into the inner spiritual life of this famous British novelist who for many years lived in Antibes and who for a short time was Patron of the English-American Library. Richard has provided below a short introduction explaining the background to this article.

As many will know, the author Graham Greene came to live in the south of France in the early nineteen sixties. In 1964 he bought the apartment in the Residence des Fleurs overlooking the Port of Antibes where he would live for the next quarter of a century.

In January 1990 Alfred Head, who was then running the English-American Library at Holy Trinity, wrote to Graham Greene asking if he would agree to be patron of the Library. Greene replied through his niece and agreed, as long as he didn't have to do anything. Greene remained as Patron of the Library until his death in Vevey, Switzerland in April 1991.

Graham Greene and Yvonne Cloetta at lunch in Monaco with Richard's father

My father first met Graham Greene before either of them came to live on the Riviera as they both had a background in British Intelligence and knew people in common including Kim Philby and John Cairncross. Their friendship grew down here and it was through my father that I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Graham Greene myself.

From the first I was impressed by how gracious and self-effacing Greene was, although one of Britain's greatest novelists he considered himself a failure. When I first met Greene I was still recovering from an illness and I will never forget his kindness towards me and how he always asked after my well-being.

One thing Greene and I had in common was a miserable experience in our respective schools and he showed great sympathy and understanding when I told him about mine. As a fellow Roman Catholic I had some interesting conversations with Greene about Catholicism on which subject he was extremely knowledgeable and well-read (much more so than I)_; testament to this was the large section devoted to theology on his bookshelves.

Graham Greene's Roman Missal

It was clear to me that Greene was very serious about his faith, even though he struggled with it at times and he was therefore very undeserving of the criticisms he received from certain quarters. He was accused, among other things of being a dilettante with regard to his Catholic faith, using it simply to further his writing career and even mocking it. It was for this reason that I decided to write this article about Graham Greene's Missal and what it reveals about his approach to his faith, in the hope that in a small way it would counteract the sometimes spiteful and unjust attacks made on him by certain authors and journalists.

READ RICHARD'S FASCINATING ARTICLE ABOUT THE MISSAL HERE