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downtrodden in the world, and for him that meant the
Left. He became an intractable and articulate foe of US
imperialism, especially of its machinations in Southern
and Central America. In 1955 he wrote The Quiet
American, a novel which was to become a classic antiimperialist
parable. In later years he was to meet and
correspond with Fidel Castro, and while still critical of
the curtailing of religious and intellectual freedom in
the country, strongly supported Cuba’s struggle against
US hegemony.
In Latin America of course, the populace shared his
Faith, yet he was conscious that the dominant reactionary
elements within Catholicism had no interest at all
in his anti-imperialist vision. When therefore, in the
80s a new strain of Faith within the region came to
prominence which shared his vision, he could scarcely
contain his intellectual glee. Liberation Theology
combined the apparently antagonistic Catholicism and
socialism which had both so inspired Greene, uniting
against the US backed juntas of the subcontinent. Oscar
Romero in Salvador and Evaristo Arns in Brazil were
just two of many to speak out the US sponsored repression
and poverty which racked their nations. Greene
came to personally befriend another such Liberation
priest, Leopoldo Duran.
That such movements were to fail, crushed by the
Washington backed strong-men, Oscar Romero assassinated
– Greene, eternal pessimist as he was, no doubt
BUY Graham Greene books online from and
anticipated. That they failed to receive the backing of
the Vatican, that indeed that they were explicitly denounced
by them, he may have found harder to reconcile.
Perhaps this contributed to the weary irony of his
statement to interviewer John Cornwell in 1989, that he
was now a “Catholic agnostic”.
Had he lived to see it however, he may well have
been heartened to see the success of Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia, a new generation
of leaders combining socialism with their Catholicism.
The latest success of the left-leaning bishop Fernando
Lugo becoming president in Paraguay would no doubt
of gladdened him most of all. Who could doubt he
would have seen some vindication here, and an answer
both to the Catholic hierarchy who saw in the Left its
great nemesis, and those on the Left who argued that
believers could only ever be reactionary. Waugh, meanwhile,
would have spun once more in his grave, a tomb
already doubtless given to much rapid rotation.
Greene and Waugh may have had diametrically
opposed positions in their politics from their own
interpretations of the Faith. But, transcending politics,
what both seemed to take from the Faith in their writing
was a sense of the complete fragility and frailty of the
human condition, the essential unworthiness of people
gained from Original Sin. In Greene this seemed to
inspire a sense of poetic heroism amidst inevitable
failure and desperation, in Waugh a very real contempt
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