The film stars Robbie Coltrane as a low ranking priest who is mistakenly elected Pope, then has to avoid being assassinated by the Mafia.

The death of the previous Pope is followed by a conclave deadlocked for 25 days, until the Mafia's tame Cardinal Rocco persuades the College of Cardinals to elect in absentia the Mafia's favoured candidate, Albini (Janez Vajevec), whose absence Rocco passes off as him working tirelessly for environmental concerns.

He had worked in an orphanage, where he took an interest in the children and wished them to enjoy the gospel, as opposed to the curmudgeonly nuns who believed misery is deserved.

Inside the Vatican, the Pope gets along with Bish, a priest in charge of coordinating his security, and with the nun assigned to bring his meals.

Looking with the papal chamberlain Monsignor Fitchie for material with which to blackmail the Pope, Cardinal Rocco finds that before joining the priesthood, Albinizi fathered a son with American tourist Veronica Dante.

Veronica never informed Albinizi of their son, who is now rock star Joe Don Dante, dating Corelli's daughter Luccia.

Monsignor Fitchie frees Bish as Albinizi rushes to the Sistine Chapel just before the ceremony ends, and reveals that the man calling himself Albini is actually Corelli in disguise.

The script, co-written with Pete Richens was based around the conspiracy theories surrounding the deaths of Pope John Paul I and "God's Banker" Roberto Calvi.

At the planning stages Alexei Sayle was proposed to star as 'Pope Dave the First' and Robbie Coltrane, Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French were also said to be involved.

The Observer reported "The programmes would have been in the form of a parody of an American mini-series, which portrayed a modern-day Pope and his rule across two continents.

Plans for the series were discovered by the press, and on 28 August 1988 The Sunday Times ran a short article entitled "Row over papal satire".

[4] Cassidy took soundings from senior colleagues including Chief Executive Michael Grade, and Director of Programmes, Liz Forgan.

Spokespeople from Channel 4 at first defended the production, denying it would be blasphemous, but when they came under increasing scrutiny they cancelled the project after advice from their lawyers.

[5] Instead they decided to commission one of Richardson's pet projects, a sequel to the "Five Go Mad..." Comic Strip films, entitled, "Five Go To Hell".

[2] This project had originally been shelved due to the poor box office takings of Richardson's previous film Eat The Rich.

[6] After the controversy, Richardson took the Comic Strip Presents to the BBC, reportedly because Alan Yentob was more accommodating to his ideas.

[8] and took place on location in Yugoslavia, where John Ebden, the production designer, constructed studio sets of the Sistine Chapel and other Vatican landmarks.

whilst NBC responded "We feel (our viewers) would be seriously offended due to the ads' sacrilegious nature"[11] 12 other cities newspapers accepted advertising only after the content had been heavily censored.

[12][13] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote "The movie's basic comic approach is disrespect for the church, which almost by definition cannot be funny.

Although he conceded "Robbie Coltrane is a British comic actor of genuine talent, but he seems under a compulsion to make bad comedies about the Catholic church"[14] Vincent Canby of The New York Times was more enthusiastic, writing "The film is irreverent, boisterous and enjoyable even when the gags hang fire."