Heh. What I liked best was how far removed the priest was from any other Catholics. It could have been treated like a missionary post, and yet there were absolutely no sisters or brothers sent? I work in a missionary diocese, myself, and even with a shortage of clergy there is still ample support lines open, even with little money. There are many, many well educated clergy, religious and even seculars who could have been sent with him (not even a deacon for mass? some mass parts are hard to do on your own...), hell, even with a "short supply" of religious I find it hard to believe that no one could have been procured to go with this priest. Catholics are really, really good about donating money. I'm sure they could have made it work. . .so I find it kinda difficult to believe...
But what made me smirk is how the Vatican in the story felt the need to have an untrained priest in the matter of miracle processing go to the site and reassure them "yeah, no, the guy was lying. No apparitions here!" before they could get their own team off the ground. So typical of people in politically charged situations. And really, it doesn't matter if the Vatican approved the miracle or not (though in the time frame given the Vatican would not have had the time to do a confirm/deny): Catholic/Christian pilgrims go to miracle sightings regardless.
In the end I can't blame the priest. He said himself that he was not as theologically gifted/trained as some other priests -- and you would have to be in the midst of scientists, to keep up with them in debate! -- so I presume he wasn't a very convincing person in such discussions. He was all alone, in the middle of non believers with absolutely no backup. So he made a mistake to rectify the situation. He may be a priest, and he may have made vows, but he's still a human.
Another thing. Four years have passed, apparently there are still millions of believers on Earth, but they are so scarce in clergy that no other priest was sent despite tens of thousands of pilgrims coming to mars? Uh, yeah, you can't tell me that absolutely no order of priests could have sent someone up. >> Just sayin'.
For all that though, I enjoyed the story. Found it to be very mellow. Good narration.