The Sparrow Who

I think is Emilio in the book. He is flying a long way from home to find God. His ecstatic experience of meeting the Runa (intensly social, technologically underdeveloped hybrids of humans and deer) borders on theophany--I was right there with him. And when the book jerks me back with him in front of the Jesuit committee, I can't understand how he went from saintliness to being a broken, emotionally defeated man. I still don't know why he killed the interpreter child, Askama, who was his constant companion on the other planet, or why he turned to prostitution--was it to protect Sofia somehow? Was it an economic thing? I have an idea why he chose to get his fingers biologically altered (to belong, to get into the socially higher status of the Jana'ata). Please Vicenzo (the Father General, son of a mafia boss, who also happens to sail like a pro) fix him. I would rather he have DW's theology (he thinks God is a comedian since he made DW a gay, ugly poet-pilot to be born in Waco TX). And Behr and Candotti are my models for good Christians, while Voelker (the binary, judgemental, sad excuse for a spiritual leader) can take his letter of the law and shove it. . . I digress. The scene where Emilio and Sofia and Askama are sitting in the tree shelter together--that's heaven for me.