In nome del papa re
In October 1867 the papal Rome, led by Pius IX, is shaken by a bomb attack carried out in the sewers of the barracks of Palazzo Serristori, which kills twenty-three French pro-papal Zouaves. A countess, mother of secret revolutionary Cesare Costa, accused with friends Giuseppe Monti and Gaetano Tognetti to have organised this massacre, goes to a judge of the Holy See, Bishop of Priverno Colombo, asking him to help her. To overcome the resistance of the Prelate, she tells him that he is the father of the accused, born during their short affair in 1849. The prelate is able to release him, hiding him in his house along with his girlfriend, but he is not able to intervene in favor of the other two arrested to be sentenced to death by the ecclesiastical court, despite an eloquent speech ponounced in front of the court. This speech causes a severe reprimand by the Pope and the General of the Jesuits, at that time called "the black pope" due to the strong power exercised by this order on the papacy.
At the end, however, Cesare Costa will be killed in an ambush by the husband of the countess who believed him to be his wife's lover. Finally, Colombo cites a letter full of bitterness and resentment that would like to write to the Pope, but to no avail, because his perpetual cry for sorrow. The movie ends when Colombo breaks with the general of the Society of Jesus, since during a holy Mass who is celebrating him does not grant him the communion.
The film describes how advanced the decrepitude of the temporal power and its laws in papal Rome. As an example, after the above-mentioned speech of Monsignor Colombo, one of the old cardinals is awakened from sleep long enough to vote for the death penalty of Monti and Tognetti. This power will fall three years later with the breach of Porta Pia.
romantic, avant garde