Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light

This is the story of a journey into a strange world of apparitions, prophecies, miracles of healing, levitation, holy relics, weeping statues, stigmata and demonic possession. The author follows a trail through Yugoslavia, Ireland, Spain, the USA, Canada, Italy and Britain, in search of proof or otherwise of divine or diabolical intervention. He investigates the Shroud of Turin, the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius in Naples, a Eucharistic miracle in the Bronx and a weeping plaque of the Virgin in Sicily. He describes a curious and sometimes sinister landscape inhabited by prophets, saints, charismatic political leaders and exorcists and finds himself in conversation with Graham Greene, Professor A.J.Ayer and the Jesuit philosopher Father Frederick Copleston. Cornwell's journey culminates in a perspective that demonstrates the moral and spiritual benefits of popular mystical phenomena, whilst redeeming them both from scientific debunking and from rigid fundamentalist interpretation.