Chapter 9 Summary

After Aguerra's departure, his malign opponent, Msgr. Flaught, arrives to a cooler reception. Arkos does not warn Francis against using his imagination with the Devil's Advocate. Flaught inquires about mental illness in Francis' family, before moving on to artificially aging paper, the commonness of the name Emily and its diminutives, and the "fantastic twaddle about an apparition." Francis is interrupted frequently as he tells his version, and is subjected to a ruthless cross-examination. Deciding Francis' story is trivial Fraught dismisses him. Viewing the Leibowitz blueprint, Fraught finds it a vivid, "dreadful incomprehensibility," and a waste of six years' work. Francis is relieved not to be told to quit. The abbey's work goes on routinely after Fraught's departure, until word comes from New Rome the Pope has decided to canonize Leibowitz in conjunction with a General Council. Withered by age, Arkos summons Francis to...