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Fiction
Catholic Guilt? Not for These Priests.
The worldly men of the cloth in Héctor Abad’s new novel find divinity both inside and outside the church.
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By
Miguel Salazar
Miguel Salazar is on the editorial staff of the Book Review.
April 29, 2026,
9:19 a.m. ET
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ASIDE FROM MY HEART, ALL IS WELL
, by Héctor Abad; translated by Anne McLean
Perhaps the least convincing archetype of moral absolutism and piety in literature and film today is the Roman Catholic priest. A clergyman is now more likely to stand in for hypocrisy or raise dilemmas over conflicting ideals: What happens, for example, when a man of the cloth finds himself at odds with his own institution?
This question animates Héctor Abad’s novel “Aside From My Heart, All Is Well,” about what the author calls a “subject so unsuited to our times: a good priest.” Here are fallible men, hemmed in by the church, who find divinity in alms and prayer, yes, but also through romance and the arts.
Aside from My Heart, All Is Well
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The novel consists of journal entries by Aurelio Sánchez, an aging priest, in remembrance of the congenial Luis Córdoba, who is largely based on the Colombian priest and film critic Luis Alberto Álvarez. The story is mostly set in 1996 Medellín, as Father Córdoba, 50, awaits a heart transplant after a grim diagnosis. “Luis had a very big heart,” Father Sánchez says, “the prologue to cardiac failure.”
Abad indulges in what even he admits is a “worn-out metaphor,” especially while chronicling Father Córdoba’s budding romance with a housemaid after he leaves the priests’ residence. His diet is now bland, but saccharine quotes (“We are curing you here with love,” Darlis, the maid, says) abound like sentimental candy.
Abad, who wrote this novel after undergoing open-heart surgery in 2021, has spoken in interviews about imbuing Father Córdoba with his own love for opera. Even so, he has also created his own fictional stand-in, a divorced atheist and aspiring filmmaker who publishes Father Sánchez’s journals as a novel. The personal connection goes further: In the 1980s, Abad was expelled from university for publishing a column mocking Pope John Paul II, a story he recreates in the book.
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