- Where is he now? - He's angry.
But not with you, or for that matter with me.
His anger keeps Him from viewing matters objectively.
And so, in protest, he's moved to a new place,
he's gone to the outskirts of town,
a filthy studio apartment upstairs from a tire repair shop.
At night, God suffers from the heat.
He can't seem to sleep, because He's come to the conclusion
that there's nothing He can do about human beings.
He's decided that He's lost the u.
Now it's up to you.
The attentions that Your Holiness has been paying to the wife
of the commandant of the Swiss Guard have not gone unnoticed.
According to vox populi,
it is believed that the Holy Father
is conducting an unseemly relationship with that woman.
Monsignor Gutierrez was right:
in the Vatican, gossip is called calumny.
Your Holiness, what do you intend to do?
Revolution, Tommaso!
I intend to start a revolution.
People say you're a saint.
People say you're a saint who performs miracles.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
Our Lord is with Thee.
Blessed art Thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
Bingo!
Now, Holy Father,
I no longer really know what miracle to wish for.
Esther,
I love God because it is so painful to love human beings.
I love a God that never leaves or that always leaves me.
God or the absence of God,
but always reassuring and definitive.
I am a priest,
I have renounced my fellow man,
my fellow women,
because I don't want to suffer,
because I'm incapable
of withstanding the heartbreak of love,
because I'm unhappy,
like all priests.
It would be wonderful to love you the way you want to be loved,
but it's not possible.
Because I am not a man.
I am a coward.
Like all priests.
That's enough photos for now.
Watch out for the custodian.
- Are you up for going on? - I am. What about you?
- Sister Mary will be upset. - I don't care.
I wanna find my mom and dad.
- I'm going back. I'm sorry, Lenny. - Ok.
You couldn't get to sleep!
The evening doesn't console me.
Nothing's changed, as you can see.
Well, something's changed.
You were just a jerk, now you've become the Pope.
Let's smoke a cigarette together, secretly.
- Like when we were kids. - Like when we were kids.
I'm glad that you find a moment to say hello to me.
How could you doubt that I'd come?
I always doubt.
When are you gonna make this blessed speech to the cardinals?
When I have something to say.
Well, I'm all out of cigarettes.
The Holy Father isn't in the Apostolic Palace.
Nor is the Cardinal Secretary of State.
What time is it?
Three in the morning.
I'll take care of it. You go to sleep.
And don't say a word to anyone.
- Will you let me in? - Of course. - Thank you.
You are very beautiful at night, Sister Mary.
Please...
Let me introduce you to my best friend, Girolamo.
- Is he a good friend? - Yes, the only one who never criticizes me.
- Why did you come here? - Because of the Pope.
How disappointing! I thought you came because of me.
Nobody knows where the Pope is.
Oh don't worry.
Sooner or later all popes need to remind themselves
what freedom is.
Then they come back.
We had to go to retrieve Pius XIII's predecessor
from a bingo parlor.
He was arguing with the caller, saying he was cheating.
When you want, you know how to be quite comforting.
How beautiful you are, Sister Mary, at night.
You already told me that.
We love God because it is so painful
to love other men and women.
You and I have renounced our fellow men, and women,
because we don't want to suffer,
because we're incapable
of withstanding the heartbreak of love.
Because we're unhappy.
Because we're cowards.
Like all priests and all nuns.
Your words are beautiful.
But that's not all.
They're true.
They are not my words, they're the words of your Pope.
Yes, yes, Girolamo, now I'll tell Sister Mary.
What are you going to tell me?
That I had found a way of destroying the Holy Father.
I'd collected all the evidence for a good old-fashioned scandal.
But I'm not going to do it!
The evidence is in here.
Here, you take it.
Your hands are safer than mine.
Because, you know something, Sister Mary?
You were right, your Pope really is a saint.
Yes.
He is!
- Good evening, Sir. - Hi.
Would you sell us some cigarettes?
I don't know if we have any.
Make yourselves comfortable and I'll go check.
Thank you.
Andrew!
Please, take a sit.
English?
Americans.
You look like a couple of priests.
We are not priests.
Have you ever seen two priests wearing track suits?
I've seen everything.
By the way, did you know I have clients who insist I am proof
of the existence of God?
Interesting theory!
But they are wrong.
They see me because they can't see far.
Can you see far?
Yes.
And I have proof of the existence of God.
Show me, ma'am.
Show me, I implore you.
Your eyes...
Your eyes, sir.
They are proof of the existence of God.
We should go.
Goodnight, ma'am.
Do you remember the time...
Sister Mary took us to the custodian's house?
Billy's mother, on her deathbed?
Yeah, I remember. I don't wanna talk about it.
It's pointless for you to go on pretending nothing happened, Lenny.
Something extraordinary happened in that room.
I don't feel like talking about it.
You're my best friend and I don't understand you.
Why don't you wanna talk about it?
I only want to talk about things that I understand.
Don't you get that?
So, what if I asked you to become Prefect
for the Congregation for the Clergy?
Select the candidates for priesthood from all over the world:
would you do it?
And what if I were to refuse?
Then I'd be forced to make recourse to my sovereign power.
I am the Pope, now.
I wanna tell you something.
It's something I've never told you before.
So tell me now.
When you first came to the orphanage,
I was watching...
from a window,
and I don't remember your father,
but I remember your mother.
What did she look like?
Her hair was parted in the middle long and on the sides...
and her eyes...
were bright...
and... impassive,
which made me think she was sad.
That's exactly how I dream of her.
Always.
Why didn't you ever tell me?
When we were boys, I thought,
I thought it would cause you too much pain.
It causes me too much pain even now.
Did you want to run away?
Come on, let's go back inside.
I haven't said anything to the Cardinal Secretary of State.
Thank you so much, Sister Mary.
Monsignor, I forgive you for having betrayed our confidences
to the Cardinal Secretary of State.
Your Holiness, how did you find out?
I forgive you for being an alcoholic
and I recommend you stop drinking
now that you're about to set off on a challenging mission to America.
Your Holiness, what else do you know about me?
I know everything a powerful man needs to know
about the people he works with.
And I, not Voiello,
am the most powerful man of all.
And what else do you know about me, Holy Father?
What else is there to know?
You always talk to me about my holiness,
the miracle I've supposedly performed,
but you never tell me anything about the only miracle I need,
the miracle that doesn't happened and never will:
seeing my parents again.
You must have faith in God, Your Holiness,
and you'll see them again.
I'm getting old.
Time is turning into a thin sheet,
and seeing them dead is of no interest to me.
I'm only interested in the living.
Holy Father,
I beg you to reconsider your decision
to send to America Monsignor Gutierrez.
The Kurtwell case needs to be examined
by a person of substantial reputation.
Gutierrez is not up to it.
He has none of the necessary expertise,
and moreover he's fragile and emotional,
and the Holy See will send the world the message
that it does not take seriously the problem of child abuse or,
even worse, is not interested in it.
And there is another problem.
I didn't want to tell you, but now I'm forced to:
Your Holiness, Gutierrez is an alcoholic.
I know.
And there is also another secret.
What if I knew that one too?
What if I knew all your secrets, Your Eminence?
What were you hoping to achieve?
Start a scandal?
The idea of threatening that poor girl, who suffers from sterility!
Will you stop at nothing, Your Eminence?
Don't you know the meaning of the word pity?
How far were you willing to go?
Would you have blackmailed the Holy Father?
Would you have gone so far as to give those pictures to the press,
to insinuate a nonexistent sexual relationship
between me and that young woman?
You haven't figured out that your old methods
only work on the old popes,
who were afraid of losing consensus.
They don't work with me.
I am the young pope.
I put no stock in consensus.
Who told...
Who told you all these things?
You put on airs as a politician,
You still haven't figured out you've run up against
a politician far cannier than you.
Me.
Holy Father, I've already destroyed those pictures.
It's true, I was thinking of using old, violent methods,
but I repented in time, Holy Father.
I repented before I could sin.
The wonderful words that you said to that young woman illuminated me.
I implore you, forgive me.
- I need your forgiveness. - You don't need my forgiveness.
You need my compassion.
Now stop making a spectacle of yourself and get off.
Holy Father, the papal tiara has arrived from Washington,
it's in perfect condition.
Prepare the Sistine Chapel.
The time has come to address the cardinals.
They're still there.
I'm going to turn around, and they'll still be there.
I'm going to turn around now, and I'll see them:
mom and dad waiting for me.
"Knock knock!"
We're not in.
Brother cardinals, from this day forward,
we're not in, no matter who's knocking on our door.
We're in, but only for God.
From this day forward, everything that was wide open
is gonna be closed.
Evangelization.
We've already done it.
Ecumenicalism.
Been there, done that.
Tolerance.
It doesn't live here anymore.
It's been evicted.
It vacated the house for the new tenant,
who has diametrically opposite tastes in decorating.
We've been reaching out to others for years now.
It's time to stop!
We are not going anywhere.
We are here. Because, what are we?
We are cement.
And cement doesn't move. We are cement without windows.
So, we don't look to the outside world.
"Only the Church possesses the charisma of truth",
said St. Ignatius of Antioch.
And he was right.
We have no reason to look out.
Instead, look over there.
What do you see?
That's the door.
The only way in.
Small and extremely uncomfortable.
And anyone who wants to know us has to find out
how to get through that door.
Brother cardinals, we need to go back to being prohibited.
Inaccessible and mysterious.
That's the only way we can once again become desirable.
That is the only way great loves stories are born.
And I don't want any more part-time believers.
I want great love stories.
I want fanatics for God.
Because fanaticism is love.
Everything else is strictly a surrogate,
and it stays outside the church.
With the attitudes of the last Papacy,
the church won for itself great expressions
of fondness from the masses.
It became popular.
Isn't that wonderful, you might be thinking!
We received plenty of esteem and lots of friendship.
I have no idea what to do with the friendship of the whole wide world.
What I want is absolute love and total devotion to God.
Could that mean a Church only for the few?
That's a hypothesis,
and a hypothesis isn't the same as reality.
But even this hypothesis isn't so scandalous.
I say: better to have a few that are reliable
than to have a great many that are distractible and indifferent.
The public squares have been jam-packed,
but the hearts have been emptied of God.
You can't measure love with numbers,
you can only measure it in terms of intensity.
In terms of blind loyalty to the imperative.
Fix that word firmly in your souls:
Imperative.
From this day forth, that's what the Pope wants,
that's what the Church wants,
that's what God wants.
And so the liturgy will no longer be a social engagement,
it will become hard work.
And sin will no longer be forgiven at will.
I don't expect any applause from you.
There will be no expressions of thanks in this chapel.
None from me.
And none from you.
Courtesy and good manners are not the business of men of God.
What I do expect...
is that you will do what I have told you to do.
There is nothing outside your obedience to Pius XIII.
Nothing except Hell.
A Hell you may know nothing about, but I do.
Because I've built it, right behind that door:
Hell.
In the past few days, I've had to build Hell for you,
that's why I've come to you belatedly.
I know you will obey, because you've already figured out
that this pope isn't afraid to lose the faithful
if they're been even slightly unfaithful,
and that means this Pope does not negotiate.
On anything or with anyone.
And this Pope cannot be blackmailed!
From this day forth, the word "compromise",
has been banished from the vocabulary.
I've just deleted it.
When Jesus willingly mounted the cross,
he was not making compromises.
And neither am I.
Amen.
Jump.
Holy Father,
I have to confess a horrible thing I did.
Confess your secrets to God alone, Esther.
Even those that have to do with me.
There's only one thing I can do for you: forgive you.
Forgive you always.
Holy Father, I feel it.
Yes, I feel it.
Yes.
You're right. I feel it too.
Bye, Zizi', thanks!
Gentlemen... what an honor!
To what do I owe...
the reason...
for this visit?
Tonino Pettola,
the reason for this visit...
is that you... have busted our balls!