Character from Hyperion by Dan Simmons
The Priest — a Jesuit carrying two cruciforms and the burden of another priest's suffering, who would later be resurrected repeatedly as Pope to serve a church built on parasitic immortality.
Lenar Hoyt's tale is the Priest's Tale — cosmic horror wearing a cassock. He escorted Father Paul Duré to Hyperion, where Duré discovered the Bikura — a tribe of humans kept alive by cruciforms, symbiotic parasites that resurrect the dead at the cost of slowly reducing them to sexless, mindless automatons. Duré crucified himself to a Tesla tree for seven years to escape the cruciform. Hoyt found him, took his cruciform, and carried both back to civilization. The pain of carrying two cruciforms is constant. Hoyt's pilgrimage is motivated by the hope that the Shrike can remove them. Instead, Hoyt dies at the Time Tombs and is resurrected by the cruciforms — becoming the template for what the Pax would later exploit. He was resurrected as Pope Julius VI through XIV, dying and being reborn nine times, then replaced by Duré as Pope Teilhard I, then resurrected again as Pope Urban XVI. The Priest's Tale is the novel's horror entry — body horror, religious horror, the horror of immortality as parasitism.
Young for a Jesuit — gaunt, intense, with the hollow look of someone in constant pain. He carries two cruciforms: his own and Paul Duré's. The parasites press against his chest like tumors of faith. His cassock hangs on a frame that is slowly being consumed by what he carries.
Also known as: Hoyt, Father Hoyt, Pope Julius, Pope Urban XVI