April 22, 2025, 12:58pm
Pope Francis, who Nick Ripatrazone called our “most literary pope”, died this Sunday. Pope Francis, who despite the faults of his institution, was an admirable man who stood for the poor and the oppressed, most notably for the Palestinians, who he advocating for right until the end of his life.
Unfortunately, one of the last public figures to see the Pope alive was Vice President J.D. “Jon Don” Vance, a bit too close to the Pope’s passing to escape suspicion. A lot of people are making some hay of Vance’s responsibility for the Pope’s death, riffing on his name, on a Dril classic , and looping in my Conclave boys.
But Dave Karpf noticed that Vance’s Clue-character proximity to a dead Pope sounds suspiciously like the inciting incident of a Dan Brown novel:
Let me get this straight: Fringe extremist infiltrates a major political party, rises to the rank of Vice President, throws around diplomatic weight to force a meeting with the Pope, and then MURDERS said Pope?Folks. This is a Dan Brown novel.
— Dave Karpf (@davekarpf.bsky.social) 2025-04-21T11:56:47.447Z
This got my mind turning: If this were a Dan Brown novel, what would happen next?
Naturally, Harvard University’s Robert Langdon — expert on the history, signs, and symbols of the Church, and lover of turtlenecks and chinos — would already be in Rome, conveniently in town on unrelated business. In this case, Langdon’s funding has been cut by a vindictive American administration, and he’s taking some time in Rome to figure out where his career goes from here. There’s not exactly a booming job market for academics who sometimes solve international crimes and conspiracies.
Langdon’s own suspicions of the Trump Administration destroying his career at Harvard are vindicated when he finds out that many in the Curia are sure that V.P. Vance had a hand in the Pope’s death too, but they won’t say why. One of Francis’ aides, who fears conservative elements in the Church are conspiring, passes Langdon a passage of obscure Latin the Pope left behind. The note is a deep cut from the Church’s history, and Langdon gets the reference. But more importantly, it’s an anagram puzzle — which Langdon solves faster than in previous books because he’s become so devoted to the NY Times’ word games recently. The solution directs him to a church in Rome. (In reality, it’s not exactly at the intersection described, but it makes for a cleaner analogy to move the location across the river from Trastevare to Regola.)
At the church, Langdon meets Sexy Lady Sidekick — a fellow researcher who will in time be revealed to have the wildest backstory imaginable, something so huge that it would change the course of history if it made the news — but for now she’s just as confused as Langdon about what’s going on.
The two go out for Aperol spritzes, and accidentally spill some on the note, which reveals a cryptic passage from an apocryphal book of the Bible followed by “DC”— Langdon gets the reference and they head to America’s capital.
There, they find that a lesser-known painting by an extremely famous Renaissance artist is on loan at the National Gallery. In the corner of the painting, a small bird being eaten by an orange cat escapes most people’s notice, but not Langdon, who gets the reference: the bird is the symbol of St. Francis, and the orange cat represents none other than… Don Trump, the President!
Also “DC” means “Washington DC” and also “Deus Christo”, a reference to an obscure rift in the early church, and there’s a band of fanatical assassin priests that aren’t over it, and they’ve been using the White House as their puppet and proxy. They’ve been working with a strange tech company in recent years… but why?
This is where the Sexy Lady Sidekick’s backstory comes in: she’s actually a clone of the Virgin Mary that was created by the tech company, which is based in San Fransisco and Rome, and funded by venture capital. And who was working at the venture capital firm before he started in politics? None other than J.D. Vance, the Vice President!
This leads Langdon and the Sexy Lady Sidekick back to Rome, to the tech firm’s lab which is under another church and staffed by a second obscure monastic order. Pope Francis was trying to put a stop to their work, which is trying to clone every great Catholic figure to rebuilt a new, classic church based on regressive, techno-traditionalism. They needed to get the Pope out of the way, so maneuvered their former money man to the highest of American politics to take out Francis. It all sounds really bad, and they also have guns — there’s a shoot-out and a big fire. Vance and his cronies are there too, and Langdon and the Sexy Lady Sidekick barely escape on motorcycles, but thanks to an obscure Renaissance-era tunnel Langdon knows about, they slip into the Vatican Catacombs.
There, the conservative Cardinals and their goons are doing something sinister and obscurely backed up by long-defunct doctrine… but unfortunately for them, Langdon gets the reference. Using another Latin-based word puzzle and armed with the info about Sexy Lady Sidekick’s backstory, Langdon outwits the bad Cardinals, who have to run to a library to try to debunk the professor.
But before they can, a third group of monks and nuns, hailing from an obscure North African order that hasn’t existed since the 13th century, burst in and kill the bad Cardinals, citing a long-forgotten bit of Church law to justify it — Langdon gets the reference, so it’s cool with him.
Their centuries old work finally concluded, the monks and nuns thank Langdon, and tell him that he’s actually not all that bad for an American and a Harvard man despite what the current U.S. government says. They share a laugh.
It’s a beautiful morning in Saint Peter’s as the tourists start to file in. Langdon and the Sexy Lady Sidekick head out to find some breakfast. Behind them, the Papal Conclave has just begun…