It is the end of World War I and the young Italian soldiers are making their way back to San Giovanni Rotondo, a land of poverty, with a tradition of violence and submission to the iron-clad rule of the church and its wealthy landowners. Families are desperate, the men are broken, albeit victorious. Padre Pio also arrives, at a remote Capuchin monastery, to begin his ministry, evoking an aura of charisma, saintliness and epic visions of Jesus, Mary and the Devil himself. The eve of the first free elections in Italy sets the stage for a massacre with a metaphorical dimension: an apocalyptic event that changes the course of history.

JJ is a soldier who's been tasked with preventing an imminent terrorist threat to the Vatican. While he's in Rome, though, he is also eager on finding his anarchist brother, a political prisoner who may or may not already be dead. In addition there's an obvious race against time and plenty of enemies.