George Southworth and Bishop Caines's alliance of interests

George Southworth and Bishop Caines are joined by a practical, unequal alignment of interests in the development of the Banfield shrine. Southworth sees a profitable pilgrimage enterprise taking shape and regards the bishop as more persuadable than Father Hagan; Caines, meanwhile, has private ambitions of his own. Their cooperation helps the shrine proceed, but it also leaves the Church’s public authority entangled with commercial opportunity and makes Fenn’s warnings easier to dismiss.

Converging Interests

Southworth’s view of the alliance emerges as he considers the consequences of the shrine’s rapid establishment. Pilgrims are expected to arrive from around the world, and he is already negotiating with Banfield’s only travel agent to create St. Joseph’s Tours. Southworth will supply capital for a bus fleet, while the agent’s foreign contacts are expected to secure partnerships with overseas travel companies. The venture promises more than transport revenue: it is also meant to feed business to Southworth’s hotel, with a modern replacement hotel planned as part of the expansion.

His commercial position extends beyond the visible tourist trade. He has secretly acquired Banfield shops through a company and a solicitor, concealing his ownership even from his fellow parish council members. With pilgrimage business expected to boom, he anticipates sharply raising rents; if current tenants cannot pay, he expects other businesses to take their places. The shrine’s growth thus offers Southworth both an immediate tourism opportunity and leverage over local property. In this calculation, religious attention and economic value reinforce one another.

The Bishop and the Priest

Southworth contrasts Caines with Father Hagan. He regards Hagan as a problem, while describing the bishop as much more susceptible to persuasion. That difference matters to the commercial prospects he is weighing: Hagan’s doubts might have obstructed the shrine’s development, but Southworth believes Caines could have eased him out of the situation. He recalls the bishop hinting in private discussions that Hagan might soon need a long rest because the controversy was too draining for a man in poor health. Southworth regrets Hagan’s untimely death, yet treats the removal of a potential obstacle as a practical consequence and speculates that Caines would otherwise have managed it indirectly.

Caines’s private ambitions give Southworth reason to see their interests as compatible, but the account does not describe a formal agreement between them. Their alignment is conveyed through Southworth’s assessment of the bishop, their private discussions, and the bishop’s handling of the Church’s response. Southworth expects institutional decisions to keep the shrine moving, while Caines retains the authority to shape that response. The arrangement is therefore useful to Southworth without requiring him to control the Church outright.

Delgard’s Investigation and Public Advocacy

The appointment of Monsignor Delgard gives the relationship a further institutional dimension. Southworth knows Caines must send someone experienced in what might be called the phenomenal, and understands that Delgard will act as both investigator and overseer. He wonders how carefully he has balanced the briefing: skepticism should remain prominent, but Delgard’s mind should also be open to the possibility of a message from God. The mixed emphasis suits a situation in which investigation and belief have to coexist, while the bishop’s selection of the investigator places the inquiry within the Church’s own authority.

Later, Fenn sees the public consequences of the bishop’s position differently. He believes that the bishop ignored his warnings and attacked him when he tried to argue that the events at the shrine were evil rather than good. Fenn understands ambition, whether for oneself or for one’s cause, as a force that can obstruct judgment; he is especially disappointed that a representative of the Church would dismiss his case. Southworth, in Fenn’s view, is the businessman behind the shrine’s commercial development, while Caines’s rejection of the reporter leaves that enterprise without the challenge Fenn hoped the Church would provide.

Meaning and Limits of the Alliance

The alliance is defined less by an explicit bargain than by compatible advantages. Southworth can profit from pilgrimage traffic, transport, hotels, and property; the bishop can advance his own ambitions while publicly guiding the Church’s involvement. The text does not establish that Caines shares Southworth’s detailed business plans or personally profits from them. Instead, it shows how Southworth reads the bishop’s political receptiveness and how Fenn interprets the bishop’s resistance to warning as a failure of discernment.

That difference in perspective gives the relationship its tension. To Southworth, Caines is a shrewd and respected churchman whose judgment can be influenced and whose institutional role can help prevent resistance from stopping the shrine’s rise. To Fenn, the bishop’s authority ought to have made him more responsive to the possibility of evil, yet ambition appears to have narrowed his judgment. Their cooperation therefore supports both the material expansion of the pilgrimage enterprise and the story’s conflict over whether public religious advocacy can still distinguish faith from exploitation.