MI: The Croatian publishing house "Verbum" recently published your voluminous novel Father Elijah, translated as The End Times. What inspired you to write this neoapocalyptic novel?

O'Brien: It began one day a few years ago, when I was visiting the Blessed Sacrament in my local parish. I was praying for the Church. Suddenly overwhelmed by the reality of how many particular Catholic churches in the Western world have been seduced by materialism and have slid into grave sin and error, I was stricken with a deep grief. Though I am not an especially emotional person by nature, I began to weep . . . .