Season 2 of Paolo Sorrentino’s papal drama, Season 1 being The Young Pope. I was pleasantly surprised at the unpozzed and uncucked Young Pope, so naturally assumed The New Pope would savagely undo all that and revel in degeneracy and filth.

At the close of Season 1, Jude Law’s righteous Pius XIII falls into a coma; Season 2 begins with the decision to elect the meek Don Tomasso Viglietti – Pius XIII’s humble confessor from Season 1 – as the new Pope; he chooses to be known as Francis the Second, and in a horrifying moment the audience realises he looks exactly like Bergoglio.

– the same look of inane, mouse-like niceness, laid over a profound, difficult nastiness.

It is the nastiness of the loser who is suddenly in the winner’s seat, with a winner’s ability to take revenge. His only mode of power is niceness, so he exercises it with ruthless, long pent-up resentment. He unleashes Franciscans, as the Catholic equivalent of Bolsheviks, to destroy the Vatican from within, confiscating gold and jewellery, freezing bank accounts, admitting “refugees” to the Vatican – for unlike the Cabal puppet Bergoglio, Francis II is a simple idiot and decides to open the Vatican to the hordes; except that the hordes are presented as the media and the affluent white liberal elite imagine them – all women and children and handsome, meek young men who are ready to sexually service menopausal cat ladies and nuns. This was the first point at which I winced, but it probably would have been too Red Pilled to have shown the “refugees” as they truly are:

Francis II is swiftly disposed of, and his replacement is Sir John Brannox, wonderfully played by the wonderfully-attired John Malkovich.

He is a curious character: indolent, vain, passive, largely removed from concerns both worldly and divine; it is as if he is so self-absorbed, so self-centred that his vast estates & wealth mean nothing to him; no more than does God or religion. He comes across as a man for whom God is a bit-part player in the grand drama of Sir John Brannox and his guilt and monumental emotional difficulties.

Brannox advocates “the middle way”, a kind of cuckish non-extremism, which basically means “don’t go too far in any direction.” That is to say, it doesn’t mean anything.

Towards the end of the season, Jude Law’s Pius XIII awakes from his coma. He is a welcome presence, as if a Medieval or Renaissance pope were to appear in the present day. I wasn’t entirely happy with the remaining episodes, which felt to me not wholly clear in intent or execution, but there were many fine moments as the “emeritus Pope” interacts with the enthroned Brannox.

I viewed the series as a study of personality and power. All three popes have different understandings of what it is to wield power. Francis II is a materialist like all Marxists, the Franciscans here being akin to various sects (Fra Dolcino, etc.) – in modern terms he is, like Bergoglio, a Marxist who hates not merely Papal corruption and wealth, but Western civilisation as a whole. His understanding of power is wholly negative: he wishes to destroy, to break down. He views wealth as inherently bad, and wishes to disperse the Vatican’s wealth, not for the benefit of others (since having more money would merely corrupt them) but to ameliorate the original sin of having anything at all; the original sin of existence. For such people, the point of “charity” isn’t to improve the lives of the recipients, but simply to take money away from the rich – they would just as happily burn the money. At its extreme, in the Soviet Union, the triumph of the Left is the triumph of death; life & existence are an affront to the absolute equality of nothingness, the true workers’ paradise of non-being.

Francis II has a very Bergoglian/Blairite love of attention, the approval of the affluent liberal elites. There is nothing remotely religious to Francis II; he is a nihilist and narcissist who wishes to revenge himself upon all the fancy Cardinals, the fancy world which kept him down. Were he to meet God, he would try to dethrone Him.

Brannox’s power is very different; it is the power of detachment, of distance, of indifference. He only cares about his self, his appearance; but it is not your standard narcissism – he doesn’t so much care how he appears to others, as how he appears to himself.

This is a man who spends hours at the mirror every morning, for his own satisfaction. The approval of others is secondary, since everyone outside of his own internal melodrama of self must be, at best, of spectral heft.

His non-action is itself a kind of power; he most wavers when he attempts to act, to impress his will (such as it is) upon others. The Brannox “middle way” is more the absence of action, the absence of decision.

Jude Law’s Pius XIII is as startlingly strange as ever. His power is spiritual. God is as real for him as cosmetics and publicity are for Brannox and Francis.

He is much as I understand pre-Modern Popes and indeed many rich/powerful men to have been – simultaneously spiritual, with a magical/superstitious understanding of reality; and worldly and material. He transcends the materialism of Francis II, and the vanity of Brannox. His worldly luxuriance – insisting on being borne into chambers in a ceremonial throne – is not the mirror image of Francis II’s Marxism; it is rather that, for the pre-Modern, everything exists simultaneously, so there was no felt contradiction between the worldly and the spiritual; indeed, spiritual power should be attended by wealth and splendour.

Pius XIII gives a sense of such overwhelming spiritual force that the jewels and magnificence seem somehow irrelevant, as if he could – and he does – step away from them without loss.

My only critique here is that his character is not consistently presented, so he is at times authoritative & puissant, then unsure and human; with no overriding identity to unify the two. It would have been interesting to explore Pius XIII as a man of power who is bereft, unable to sway God, stripped of his titles. For spiritual/magical power is often so – as if it must inconsistently operate in this world, if it is to operate at all.