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Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca leaves the Sistine Chapel alone after the revelation that the Pope was his biological father. Overwhelmed by guilt and religious mania, Carlo recalls poisoning the Pope weeks earlier, believing the Pope’s apparent embrace of science and supposed fatherhood proved corruption within the Church.

In flashback, Carlo remembers finding the Pope dead after the murder and publicly claiming the Pope had died of a stroke. Convinced that the Church needed terror followed by renewal, Carlo also recalls luring the four preferiti into the Passetto by offering them access to the hidden passage, where a foreign priest led them away to their deaths.

Back in the present, Carlo moves through St. Peter’s Basilica under the influence of morphine, interpreting his own thoughts and hallucinated memories of Mother Maria as divine guidance. He first heads toward the Necropolis, but decides that a hidden death would not serve God because Christ’s sacrifice was witnessed by the world.

In the Niche of the Palliums, the lamplight casts Carlo’s shadow like an angel, which Carlo takes as another sign. Meanwhile, Mortati, Langdon, Vittoria, and the cardinals cannot find Carlo until the crowd outside erupts: Carlo has appeared on the Papal Balcony, dressed in white and raising his arms before the masses.

Carlo silently leads the square into prayer, and the enormous crowd falls still with him. Having soaked his robe, hair, and skin in the sacred oils from the lamps, Carlo uses a lighter to ignite himself before the world, turning his death into a public spectacle he believes will leave the Church with awe and renewed faith rather than scandal.