The Young Pope

Lenny Belardo is the youngest Pope in history but also the first American pontiff. His radical ideas could change the Roman Catholic church, but underlying many of his choices is an ancient sorrow and a tormented relationship with his faith.

Lenny Belardo is Pius XIII, the first American Pope. But Lenny Belardo, at age 47, is also the youngest Pope in history, and he clearly has shown that he has some very strong ideas about how to guide his papacy: from the very outset he gives the impression of being a reactionary, on the threshold of obscurantism, and he takes a stance of open conflict with the highest ecclesiastical hierarchies, of which the Cardinal Secretary of State Voiello is perhaps the most notable member. At the same time, Lenny is a fragile man, haunted by a painful event bound up with the past, something that torments his entire relationship with the faith. At his side is Sister Mary: the woman who took him in at the orphanage when his parents abandoned him, and who has been there for him ever since. On the first day of his papacy, Lenny will meet a number of key figures who are to accompany him on his journey: Voiello, Monsignor Gutierrez, the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations of the Vatican, and Don Tommaso, the father confessor whom Lenny will convince to betray the secrecy of the seal of the confessional.