A countess, the secret mother of revolutionary Cesare Costa, who is accused with friends Giuseppe Monti and Gaetano Tognetti of having organised this massacre, goes to a judge of the Holy See, Bishop of Priverno Colombo, asking him to help her.

At the end, however, Cesare Costa is shot 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 he would like to write to the Pope, but to no avail, because of his perpetual cry for sorrow.

The film describes the advanced 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 his deep sleep, just to vote in favour of the death penalty of Monti and Tognetti.