His ruminations were interrupted as the man finished his report

“Of course,” Braun replied, in his most soothing pastoral voice. “You will continue to do well and our mission will be blessed as long as we continue to hold fast to our faith in Jesus Christ.”

They hung up and Braun continued the survey of his study and knew that all would change once he had the Sophia Passion, the testament of a Messiah he was determined to keep secret at all costs.

After Sophia’s secrets had made him Pope, he would call a series of meetings with the heads of the world’s major religions. The power of the Sophia Passion and the threat it carried would force concessions of the most historical nature, perhaps not a reunification but at the very least a profound realignment, a coming together to marshal the forces of the world’s religions under his guidance.

It would work, he was sure of it. Braun knew the instincts of self-preservation so deeply rooted in the bureaucracies of the world’s established churches. Sophia threatened the very structure of the Western world’s organized religions. And Braun knew that the people who sat atop those structures would do anything to preserve their churches and their positions in their hierarchies.

Onward Christian soldiers! Braun’s support would give them the moral authority they needed to move against their own enemies. Enemies of governments and enemies of the church would all be the same. Political dissent would the with religious dissent.

He saw nothing less than a return to the old Holy Roman Empire, where emperors and Popes appointed each other and where each ruled with the authority of the other, always in the name of God. But more significantly Braun was talking about unity, peace, and harmony through the unity of belief. It was his crusade. God is my sword! He felt the warmth well up in his breast.

The time was right, too, in the West. Politicians and military officers and even ordinary citizens were frustrated by their helplessness in the face of terrorism and decay. They were all frustrated and would seize a promising opportunity to rid themselves of their helplessness. It would start with moral authority. Slowly, carefully Braun would solidify his own moral authority. From there he would talk with those in the military and government who needed a blanket of further moral authority with which to cloak themselves.

And from there, the awesome public-opinion-molding machines would go to work: vast armies of propagandists with their sophisticated tools to manipulate the facts, and with them, public opinion. And what they couldn’t manipulate they would classify as secret. These men knew what they were doing. They knew how to use God and patriotism to lead the people. They would find the right chord to strike, and within the population the sentiments would resonate. And then violence, bloodshed, religious intolerance. My country right or wrong. My God right, never wrong.

The undercurrents were already there: the Christian Right had tapped into it as had the ayatollahs and the extreme Orthodox rabbis in America and Israel. They drew their strength from a raging subterranean river and he intended to harness them all.