Thirty years old and trapped in a sexless marriage, Piero Rosini decides to dedicate his life to Jesus. Moving to an unfinished housing development in Rome he throws himself into his work at an ultraconservative Catholic publishing house, editing works which attack modern life's decadence: including a book claiming that Pope John Paul II was secretly Jewish.

Yet still Piero is suffocating. He worries that The Jewish Pope might be taking things too far. He can't get his beautiful sister-in-law out of his head. Can his purity really survive temptation?