In the Name of the Pope King

In October 1867 a bomb explodes in the sewers beneath the Palazzo Serristori barracks, killing twenty-three French Papal Zouaves. The attack shatters the sense of security in Papal Rome under Pius IX and underscores the volatile clash between secular power and church authority. The event sets the stage for the political and legal intrigues that follow.

A countess, secret mother of Cesare Costa, goes to a judge of the Holy See, Bishop Colombo, asking him to intervene. She presents her plea as a remedy for a miscarriage of justice and for her son's sake. The encounter marks the first overt collision between personal revenge and ecclesiastical power.

To overcome the prelate's resistance, she reveals that Colombo is the father of one of the accused from a past affair in 1849. The claim is used to secure extraordinary intervention for Cesare Costa. The moment heightens the personal stakes behind a political trial.

Colombo orders the release of Cesare Costa and hides him in his own house along with Costa's girlfriend. This act demonstrates a remarkable bending of ecclesiastical authority to protect an individual, even as others face punishment. The shelter sets up further consequences for the judge's standing within the Church.

Despite Colombo's intervention for Costa, Giuseppe Monti and Gaetano Tognetti remain arrested and are sentenced to death by the ecclesiastical court. Colombo's eloquent speech before the court fails to halt their execution. The scene underscores the might of church law in a decaying patriarchal system.

The speech before the court provokes a severe reprimand from the Pope and the General of the Society of Jesus, often called the Black Pope. The incident highlights the rigid hierarchy and the limits of individual mercy within the papal system. The monastic power structure looms large over personal loyalties.

In a tragic turn, Cesare Costa is shot in an ambush by the husband of the countess, who believes Costa to be his wife's lover. The killing embodies the lethal consequences of clandestine political intrigue. The event closes the Costa chapter with personal vengeance.

Colombo drafts a bitter letter to the Pope, filled with resentment and sorrow, but he never finds a way to send it. The moment reveals his deepest wounds and his inability to change the Church from within. It marks another crack in the perfect façade of religious authority.

During a Holy Mass, Colombo refuses to administer the Holy Eucharist to the Jesuit General, who later appears in church to arrest Colombo. The act signals Colombo's definitive break with the order and a personal crisis of conscience. The church becomes a scene of political theater as power collides with piety.

One of the old cardinals wakes from a long sleep to vote in favor of the death penalty for Monti and Tognetti. The moment illustrates the unyielding machinery of the ecclesiastical system. It underscores the persistence of punitive justice despite reformist voices.

The film underscores the advanced decrepitude of the temporal power and its laws in Papal Rome. This looming decline foreshadows a dramatic change that will come with the breach of Porta Pia. The tension between church authority and secular power culminates in a turning point.

Three years after the bombing, the Breach of Porta Pia marks the fall of Papal temporal power. The film situates this historical hinge as the ultimate consequence of the depicted conflicts. The ending frames the events as part of a larger national and historical transition.