Father Andrew Hagan’s Decline and Heart Disease

Father Andrew Hagan’s decline and heart disease form one of the novel’s central ambiguities: his deterioration is visible to others and his death is ultimately attributed to a heart attack, yet Monsignor Delgard understands the change as a loss of spiritual vitality connected to Alice Pagett and the church. The difference between those accounts remains consequential. Hagan is not simply unwell; as his confidence in the supposed miracles weakens, the priest responsible for caring for Alice becomes increasingly afraid of her.

Physical Decline and the Parish Crisis

The account of Hagan’s weakening emerges amid events that resist a single explanation. When children gathered near Alice Pagett and the oak, some collapsed while others wept or displayed intense excitement. Gerry Fenn saw a resemblance to the earlier mass collapse at the Mansfield Marching Band Festival and considered whether Alice’s state had affected the children. That interpretation placed the episode within the possibility of collective hysteria rather than establishing a supernatural cause. The disturbance nevertheless formed part of the crisis that left the clergy unwilling to leave the church, where they feared further disorder.

Hagan’s own condition became visible to Bishop Caines after the shock of events. Caines observed that the priest looked grayer than before and had a desperate expression, and accepted that he needed rest. These signs provide a concrete measure of decline without, at that point, settling its cause. Later, at dinner, Hagan suffered a sudden crisis that witnesses initially interpreted as choking. Caines instead feared a heart attack and called attention to Hagan’s weak heart. The scene therefore places physical vulnerability at the center of the death even as the surrounding story invites other readings.

The Priest’s Changing View of Alice

Hagan’s spiritual and emotional deterioration is tied to a change in how he sees Alice. He had known her since she was a baby, had given her First Communion, and had encouraged her to join other children despite her deafness and muteness. Monsignor Delgard recalls that Hagan had regarded her as a good, innocent child who liked helping her mother at St. Joseph’s. But in the weeks before his death, Hagan became afraid of her.

That change coincided with growing doubt. According to Delgard, Hagan did not believe that the reported cures were miraculous and did not believe that Alice saw the Blessed Virgin. He had initially been uncertain, but his skepticism did not restore his earlier ease with the child. Instead, the account sets his doubts beside his fear: his long familiarity with Alice and memory of her innocence do not prevent him from sensing a threat in her present condition.

The other witnesses do not provide a definitive explanation for the experiences surrounding Alice. After one episode, Sue described feeling dreamy and almost hypnotized. Fenn argued that hysteria could spread through a crowd, while also noting that investigators of the Mansfield collapse had disagreed over whether poisoning might have contributed; traces of malathion had been found in the soil, though they were judged insufficient to explain the episode. These competing possibilities frame Hagan’s crisis within a wider pattern of uncertainty. The events may be approached as collective suggestion or illness, but the narrative also gives force to the possibility that something more dangerous is at work.

Delgard’s Interpretation and Hagan’s Death

Monsignor Delgard interprets Hagan’s decline through the same spiritual framework he applies to the church. He tells Gerry Fenn that Hagan had undergone the same trauma for many weeks, and that his stronger perception and feelings had made him more vulnerable to it. Delgard describes Hagan’s vitality as being drained, parallel to what he believes has happened to the church’s spiritual essence. This is Delgard’s explanation, not an established medical finding; its importance lies in the way it links the priest’s bodily weakening to the parish’s larger spiritual crisis.

At dinner, Hagan’s distress was first read as choking, and Caines reacted to the possibility of a heart attack by referring to the priest’s weak heart and the need for his pills. Fenn also insisted that Hagan was choking. The postmortem later established that Hagan had died of a heart attack. The meat he had swallowed may have triggered the initial panic, but it was not large enough to have physically choked him. The finding clarifies the immediate cause of death while leaving Delgard’s account of the preceding weeks unconfirmed.

Aftermath and Significance

Hagan’s funeral deepens the effect of his death on Fenn. Watching the coffin lowered into the grave disturbed the reporter; he connected the experience to the burials of his parents, who had both died when he was young, and wondered whether his own failed attempt to save Hagan had intensified his grief. The postmortem result offered a medical explanation, but it did not remove Fenn’s sense of loss or resolve the spiritual questions surrounding the priest’s final weeks.

Hagan’s decline thus holds two accounts in tension rather than allowing either to cancel the other. Heart disease explains the death recorded by the postmortem, while his visible deterioration, his fear of Alice, and Delgard’s claim that his life-force was being drained give the illness a place in the novel’s supernatural pattern. His death also marks the cost of the crisis for those trying to understand it: the explanation may be medically specific, yet the events that shaped his final weeks remain open to competing interpretations.