A Note from Michlaude

Before we begin

This book was born at a table in Rome, over coffee that grew cold because no one wanted to interrupt the conversation to reheat it. It is the biography of a man I came to know through his words before I knew him in person, and whom I found, when we finally sat face to face, to be even more than his words had promised.

Cardinal Augusto Ferretti is my friend. I did not expect that. I came to him first as a challenger — a Protestant apologist from Florida with a notebook and a willingness to press hard on the old stones of his tradition. He did not flinch. He engaged me with a spirit so genuinely rooted in Christ that I found, to my own surprise, that I had nothing to fight about. Only things to learn.

This book is told in his voice, at his table, with his oldest friend Father Emmanuel sitting beside him to keep him honest. I asked the questions. Emmanuel provided the corrections. Augusto told the truth.

We have changed a few names to protect the people whose confessions and struggles wander through these pages. Everything else is as it happened, as best three imperfect memories can reconstruct it.

The nom de guerre “Michlaude” belongs to both of us. It seemed right that a book about a friendship should carry two names pressed into one.

We give this story to God, from whom it came.

— Michlaude