Vatican Cameos (or, Pope Tropes): Notable Bearers of the Title of Bishop of Rome, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church (etc.)

by RamercyGriff

Summary:

A quick history of Popes and the Catholic Church in the world of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Chapter 1: Lauds: Lives of the Saints!

LIVES OF THE SAINTS COMICS

They Kick Arse for the Lord!

See the miraculous laying-on of hooves by St. Katy

See the persecution of St. Grobian the Repulsively-Lower-Middle-Class!

 

Also… Special Papal Issue!

***

Aptly is Rome named the Eternal City. Her origins lie as far back in the foggy reaches of history as the 12^th century BC, when the great hero Heracles (whose name the locals’ clumsy tongues mangled into ‘Hercules’), in the midst of driving a herd of sacred cattle from Tartessos to Tiryns, slew Cacus, the fire-breathing giant of Aventine Hill. That simple act wiped a tiny barely-village of shepherds and dung-gatherers from the map and rebuilt in its place the core of a city that would in time come to dominate the known world. Rome has been a city of heroes, such as the wolf-suckled Romulus (from whom the city takes its name), early super-sleuths Gordanius and Marcus Didius Falco, Maciste the strongman, even those who came as conquerors, such as Artorius Riothamus of Britain or Abraracourcix of Gaul. Rome has been a city of mysteries; the haunted mansion of Mater Lachrymarum, the untold fate of lost Ninth Legion, the ministries of bootleg Messiahs such as Mithras, Judah Ben Hur and Brian Ben Naughtius. Through it all, Rome has endured.

Left : Painting depicting Fabian I learning the speech of the birds, frogs and dogs

Below: Pope Gregorius after seventeen years of fasting while chained to a rock

Although the days of SPQR are long behind, Rome still enjoys a unique position as a leading place in the world’s spiritual community. It is to Rome’s famous Apostolic Palace that the world looks to, eagerly awaiting the plumes of white smoke and the announcement of “Habemus Papam!” upon the selection of a new Pope. Since the Church’s inception upon the Crucifixion of the Apostle Peter (as outlined in the writings of Roman officer Marcus Vinicius), the title of Supreme Pontiff has been held by no fewer than two hundred and sixty six individuals (not counting the brief tenure of Sixtus VII, the first and only robot pope). In this exclusive special issue, to usher in the dawning of a new ministry of Innocent XVI, we are pleased to present a brief history of modern day church leaders for your spiritual edification.

Left to Right: Woodcarving depicting the acclimation of Pope John Anglicus, later revealed as Joan; painting of Clement VI granting his blessing on Roger de Tourneville on the eve of the flight of the Wesgorix spacecraft Crusader; Pope Pius XII awards American government agent Red “Hellboy” Bruttenholm honorary human status. Skulking in background, Cardinal Patrick Henry Roark, an opponent of the decision (photograph taken 1952)

Chapter 2: Cyril I

Birth Name: Kiril Pavlovich Lakota

Nationality: Russian

Previous Post: Cardinal, priest of Sant’Atanasio; Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv

Pontificate: 1963-1978

Motto: Si ecclesia est opiata missarum, prior dosis sit gratis.

 

Fleeing his parish in Ukraine to escape persecution by the Soviets, this soft-spoken Slav impressed the incumbent Holy Father with tales of how he ministered to his small, secretive flock even faced with the threat of death. Being awarded the titulus of the Church of St. Athanasius granted him a seat in the College, but it still came very much as a surprise when Kiril replaced his patron as Pope not long after.

Briefly flirting with the papal title Marx I before settling on the romanized form of his own name (in honor of his namesake, the Apostle of the Slavic world), Cyril made it his mission to bring the message of wealth redistribution and austerity to his administration, selling many of the Church’s valuable treasures to help feed the hungry. One wonders if this has anything to do with his sudden and unexpected passing.

***

The much-publicized 1971 exorcism of Regan MacNeil renewed national interest in the Catholic Church, in particular its never-publicly-acknowledged role combating threats of a supernatural nature. That Church authorities have secretly employed demonologists, witchfinders, vampire hunters, ghost smashers and other assorted ugly-bumpers for centuries, all despite publicly disavowing such beings’ existence, is not in significant doubt. One such expert was the 15^th century Archdeacon of Josas, whose research into alchemy and spiritual afflictions helped dispel the notion that physical deformity was not a symptom of demonic affliction.

References to other Church-sanctioned monster hunters appear sporadically throughout esoteric literature. From allusions to several figures using the name 'van Helsing,' to the Civil War-era confessor Jeremiah Parrish and defrocked nun Eileen Callaghan, and even more recently, more obscure nods to names such as Mallory, Maxwell and Crow. Most believe Fr. Lankester Merrin, who had been involved in the MacNeil case, to have been privy to the details of these secret monster-hunting ventures. His career, beginning as a parish priest in Ireland’s remote Craggy Island, took a significant detour through the world of occult archaeology later in life. We may only hope that the full truth of his activities will someday be more widely known.

Chapter 3: John Paul I (wait, what?)

Birth Name: Raffaele Lamberto

Nationality: Look at the name and take a wild guess

Previous Post: Cardinal, Archbishop of Siracusa

Pontificate: Like four weeks.

Motto: Non est tempus inimicos creare

Born in Vigata, Sicily, a picturesque and charming den of bloodthirsty mobsters (only a few miles from the crash-landing site of celebrity kaiju Ymir the Venusian Horror), John Paul I was noted early on in his clerical career as a devout, passionate, and kindly man of the cloth. When the conclave elevated him to the papacy, most agreed it was a good tiding. But not all. Lamberto’s pledge to reform the Institute for Works of Religion (the so-called Vatican Bank) made him several powerful enemies in that second most celebrated of Italy’s institutions, organized crime.

The assassination attempts began fairly early in His Holiness’ career. The best-remembered and most publicized one involved a dwarf and a man stealing the identity of his twin brother (an attempt mercifully and, in its own way, comically averted). However, as poor John Paul’s administration lasted only thirty-three days, it is taken as a matter of faith (ha ha) that one of those attempts must have eventually been successful. Remember in Italy, some people take business very personally. So it was that 1978 went down in history as the year of three popes.

***

We had intended to write an in-depth piece here on the connections between the Catholic Church and a the Mafia. But I’m afraid our research turned up nothing of consequence. Really. Nothing to see here. Move along. Please?

Chapter 4: Oswald Leopold II

Birth Name: possibly ‘get bent’

Nationality: Zubrowkan

Previous Post: Cardinal, Archbishop emeritus of Lutz

Pontificate: 1978-2005

Motto: Posteriora tua immaculata non erit, cum sum ego feci vobiscum

Selecting a holy name from his native mitteleurope (and inexplicably skipping past the nonexistent Oswald Leopold I) was the first of many acts proving him to be a most singular vicar of Christ. Early in his tenure, his numerous sex scandals made him something of an embarrassment to the Church, to the point where Camerlengo Ventresca attempted to engineer his removal from office and replacement with a pliable blue collar puppet by the name of Dave Albinizi.

Oswald Leopold would redeem himself in the public’s eyes when he was exposed as the science-hero known as Battlepope (as secret identities go, one of the more easily unraveled), using his divinely-bestowed abilities to combat demons, villains, and prophylactic salesmen.

***

As the Albinizi conspiracy would indicate, the Universal Church’s many internal schisms have made shadowy splinter organizations an unfortunate but persistent reality. The Poor-Fellow Soldiers of the Temple of Solomon, the Priory of the Grail and of Sion, the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, the Knights of St. Hagan, the Order of St. Dumas… each had split away from the Church pursuing its own agenda, and there can be little doubt that each had its own agents infiltrating the Vatican. That the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, better known as the Inquisition, was tasked with ferreting these infiltrators out meant little, since many of those infiltrators found their way into said office.

Chapter 5: Silvester III

Birth Name: Percy Franklin 

Nationality: Limey 

Previous Post: Assistant Priest, South Croydon 

Pontificate: 2005-2013

Motto: Puto aequum esse quod scis me sentire valde depressum.  

The first British Pope since Hadrian VII, Father Percy Franklin had grown up in the dark days of the Ingsoc regime, and like many at that delicate time, became a not-altogether-willing recruit of Harold Wharton’s Big Brother youth. Upon the collapse of that government, Franklin began a career as a man of the cloth, first as an Anglican, later converting to Catholicism. 

Created a cardinal in the late 1970s, Silvester III rose to the papacy on the promise of continuing the Church’s more conservative traditions. Unfortunately, the mental scars brought on by an Ingsoc-era childhood seem to have wrought a deleterious effect on his psyche, making him a pronouncedly paranoid pontiff. His belief in the imminent advent of the Antichrist led him to condemn the Goodman Jesus-cloning project, not to mention causing considerable friction with Britain’s newly-out-of-the-vanishing-cabinet wizard community. 

*** 

Silvester was yet another link in a lengthy, unbroken chain of staunch conservatives in St. Peter’s Basilica, sending a clear message of a Church mired in tradition and hesitant to modernize. At the turn of the millennium, however, with youths growing increasingly disinterested in spiritual matters, the need for change was more apparent than ever. The Church had not been, to put it plainly, “cool” in decades. 

Not counting exorcisms, which were never fully disclosed to the public, the Church’s only relatable superstars were handful of super-sleuths- Brown, Boniface, Koesler, the enigmatic and long-lived Cadfael (until his mysterious beheading), Dowling, Anselm, Chambers (technically Anglican but you’d be surprised how many people couldn’t tell the difference) who were largely regarded as quaint antiques. The sentiment was clear; it was time for younger blood. 

Chapter 6: Pius XIII

Birth Name: Lenny Belardo

Nationality: American

Previous Post: Cardinal, Archbishop of New York

Pontificate: 2013-2025

Motto: Sicut ludens loqui

Hailed as the youngest pope in history, provided one didn’t bother looking through all that tedious history to see whether or not that was actually true, Lenny Belardo was also first American pope, to the absolute despair of Italians and the frothing rage of the Irish. Having grown up in an orphanage, the Church had always been his only family, Sister Mary Stigmata his mother, then Archbishop Mike O’Sullivan his father.

Pius wasted no time declaring for a Church agenda that was both radical and regressive, breaking through the humdrum complacency of recent years while jamming a vasodilator down the Church’s throat, resurrecting its long dormant political weight. A new-old era of backroom scheming commenced; by the time Pius finally had the grace to pass on, the public had seen another power struggle with secular authorities, another attempted papal assassination, and another antipope, with many of them taking bets on which corner the next Holy War was around.

***

One of the more mercifully lighthearted events during this administration was a surprise lawsuit against the Vatican by the professed remnants of the long-lost Knights Templar order, a lawsuit ultimately deemed spurious and thrown out. Historians maintain that no evidence remains of any of the Templars surviving past their dissolution in the early 14 ^th century. As they had provably been involved in all manner of Satanic orgies (thanks to documents from the time of Grandmaster Giles Amaury, which allude to two strange inductees called only ‘Brother Orlando’ and, curiously, ‘Sister Orlando’), few are likely to miss them.

As for their purported vast treasure of holy relics, archaeologists differ on whether it was donated to Freemasons, discovered by the Count of Monte Cristo, or even was one of those lame ‘symbolic’ treasures. The only piece widely believed to be authentic was a rather ugly bird statue recovered in Istanbul around 1931, which failed to attract much public interest and was believed discarded by a disappointed museum curator. Legal experts maintain that any actual treasures would probably, upon discovery, be transferred to the possession of the UN’s International Money Council office in Paris to assess their impact on the global economy

Chapter 7: Innocent XIV

Birth Name: Vicente Benitez

Nationality: Filipino

Previous Post: Cardinal, Archbishop of Jabal Nafusa; Bishop, Central Congo Area

Pontificate: 2025-

Motto: Sors est quasi architriclinus qui ordinem tuum iniuriam accipit.

He came out of nowhere. Nobody had heard of him. Nobody had even realized there was an episcopal post in Qumar. In point of fact, Cardinal Benitez’s post had been created entirely in secret by the previous Pontiff. Thus, absolutely nobody saw his appointment coming. However, with all the other likely candidates embroiled in some scandal or other, the rest of the Church had little choice but to shrug and accept it. Not all were so resigned; rumors (given little credence by Church authorities) sprang up almost immediately of Benitez being a secret dual-gender intersexed individual.

With regards to his prior clerical career, the newly dubbed Innocent XIV had done the Lord’s work in some of the most dangerous places on Earth. Made a bishop in the war-torn Congo after his two immediate predecessors had been blown up during a visit to the Fortunati Memorial Hospital and eaten by an escaped gryffin from the nearby hidden valley of Pal-Ul-Don. In Qumar his ministry operated in secret at great risk of discovery by cultural police. So, in the grand scheme of things, what else could really go wrong?

*** 

The creation of a cardinal in pectore is one of countless abstruse (one might go so far as to say recherché) traditions in Catholic canon law which have seen unexpected scrutiny in modern times. Headlines promoting Innocent XIV as the Church’s king-in-waiting in 2025 were almost as prevalent as headlines explaining the concept of plenary indulgence following Cardinal Ignatius Glick’s announcement of that doctrine’s reinstatement in 1999. Whereas Cardinal Glick has since been defrocked and transitioned into a career selling limited edition Jesus merchandise, the Church’s more arcane customs are still a source of fascination for the public, and many of them are topics of hotbed discussion within the institution’s inner councils.

Post-Resurgence, ecclesiastical authorities have been forced to reexamine precisely how all manner of nonhuman, supernatural beings fit into God’s plan for us. Scholars have taken a renewed interest in a paper written by former seminarian Raymond Stanz of New York in the 1970s, discussing whether the existence of ghosts might indicate the possibility of a postmortem absolution of sin. Vatican scholar Cardinal Matthias Reese, himself tentatively viewed as a popular candidate for the papacy at a future date, has cited the works of a medieval scholar pen-named ‘Imperius,’ discussing whether ordained priests might be authorized to indulge in some forms of magical ritual. To suggest an ironically Buddhist sentiment, the only certainty in the Catholic Church’s future is the certainty of change.

Chapter 8: Vesper: The Apocrypha of St. Annotatius (and may your filthy soul be prepared for Hell)

With regards to the title; Sherlock Holmes mentions a case involving "Vatican Cameos" (in this context, a cameo probably meaning a gem carving) in the famous story Hound of the Baskervilles, but doesn't give any details on what exactly the case was. The phrase itself apparently evolved into a code British soldiers used in WWII to mean 'that civilian is armed,' at least if you believe internet chatter. 

Cyril I is Kiril Pavlovich Lakota from the Morris West novel The Shoes of the Fisherman (which, by the by, was the first part of a trilogy West wrote of Vatican political dramas, preceding The Clowns of God and Lazarus). 

There actually was a John Paul I, naturally, but this version is the fictionalized John Paul (formerly Cardinal Lamberto) from The Godfather: Part III. As he had no given name in the script, I dubbed him "Raffaele" in honor of the actor who played him. 

Oswald Leopold II is the main character of the absurdist comic book Battlepope, written by a pre-Walking Dead, pre-Invincible, pre-famous Robert Kirkman for an indie magazine called Funk-O-Tron.   

Silvester III comes from the 1907 Christian apocalyptic novel Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson (a former Anglican who converted to Catholicism later in life, causing quite a scandal at the time). 

Pius XIII is the main character of the Netflix series The Young Pope, where he was played by Jude Law. 

And of course Innocent XIV comes from the novel-turned-film Conclave. 

 

CHAPTER ONE 

St. Katy comes from "Saint Katy the Virgin," a short story by John Steinbeck in which a pig demonstrates healing powers and is eventually made into a saint. There is no St. Grobian in real life, but a 15th century comic writer by the name of Sebastian Brant invented him for his poem Das Narrenschiff. 

All the stuff about Hercules fighting a giant at the future site of Rome is from classical myth; Evander testifies as much, at least. Gordianus the Finder and Marcus Didius Falco are both Roman-period murder mystery novels from Roma Sub Rosa by Steven Saylor and the works of Lindsey Davis, respectively. Maciste is a character from early Italian cinema, originally created by filmmaker Gabriele d'Annunzio; Maciste himself is a goodhearted strongman who gets into all kinds of adventures in various time periods and settings (and even journeys to Dante's version of hell in "Maciste all'Inferno"). Artorious Riothamus is an extravagant way of saying "King Arthur," who does indeed defeat the Roman Emperor Lucius (maybe meant to be Glycerius?) in Malory's Morte D'Arthur and Abraracourcix is the chief of Asterix's tribe in the Goscinny comic Asterix (English speakers know him better as Tunabrix or Vitalstatistix). 

Mater Lachrymarum is one of the trio of evil witches from Dario Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy. The Ninth Legion was, naturally, a real legion in the Roman military that is often cited as 'lost'- in real life, it most likely was simply disbanded and we never found the record, but fiction writers insist something more fantastic must have happened to it (for a sampling: Doc Savage found their descendants in Africa, where they founded a city called Nova Eboracum; Marvel Comics proposes they crossed the Atlantic and settled in Brazil, forming a society in which X-Man Magma grew up; in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera, they wandered into another dimension where they learned to control elemental spirits; and so on). Mithras is a real Persian deity whose tale has a few similarities to Jesus, leading some theorists to hastily propose he is the origin of the Jesus legend, while Ben-Hur is from the film of the same name and Brian comes from Monty Python's Life Of Brian. 

Marcus Vinicus is from Quo Vadis? (book and three times a movie). Sixtus VII is from Robert Silverberg's Good News From The Vatican. Fabian is a real pope, but the idea of him talking to animals comes from the Grimm Fairy Tale "The Three Languages." Gregorius comes from a 12th century poem by Hartmann von Aue. "John Anglicus" is actually Pope Joan, a female pope from medieval legend (who was accepted as real until the 17th century); there's been at least one movie based around her. Roger de Tourneville and his spacecraft are from the Poul Anderson sci fi novel The High Crusade. Hellboy actually did receive honorary human status from the Pope in his own comic, and Cardinal Roark is from Sin City. 

 

CHAPTER TWO  

Si ecclesia est opiata missarum, prior dosis sit gratis could translate clumsily to "if the church is the drug of the masses, let the first hit be free," a nod to one of Karl Marx's more popular sayings. On that note, the proposed name "Marx the First" is a nod to a book of that name by Bruce Marshall, part of a trilogy of Pope fiction (how many Pope trilogies can there be?). 

Regan MacNeil and Lankester Merrin are from The Exorcist. The 15th century Archdeacon of Josas is better known by Claude Frollo, from Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (English speakers will know it better as The Hunchback of Notre Dame). And he was indeed interested in alchemy in the book, leading some to believe him a sorcerer, though it didn't feature heavily in the plot. Apart from the van Helsing who fought Dracula in the Bram Stoker novel, there was also a 2004 movie called Van Helsing in which the title character fought monsters (including, well, Dracula) with the aid of a friar and a Roma woman. Jeremiah Parrish is the real name of Astro City superhero the Confessor, sort of 'Batman but religious, and he later turns out to be a vampire.' Eileen Callahan is the werewolf-hunting Irish nun from Cherie Priest's Dreadful Skin. Mallory is from the corny movie Bloody Mallory. Maxwell is Enrico Maxwell, the bloodthirsty monster-hunting priest from the Hellsing anime. And Crow is Jack Crow from John Carpenter's Vampires. 

Craggy Island is the setting of the Irish comedy Father Ted. Quite obviously, Father Merrin was never hinted to be from there in the original book, though at least he was meant to be Irish. 

 

CHAPTER THREE 

Non est tempus inimicos creare should mean something like "this is no time to be making new enemies." It's supposedly something Voltaire said when he was asked if he would renounce the devil and all his works. Ironically it made him quite a few Christian enemies. 

Vigata is the home city of Inspector Montalbano, from the works of Sicilian writer Andrea Camilieri. The kaiju Ymir comes from the Harryhausen movie 20 Million Miles To Earth; the movie itself was set in Italy (with the climax taking place in Rome), but it's never said specifically that any of it is in Sicily (though a plot point is that the monster is attracted to sulfur, which is mined in large quantities in Sicily). The assassination attempt involving a dwarf and a twin is from the Chevy Chase movie Foul Play. 

 

CHAPTER FOUR 

Zubrowka is a vaguely Austrian country from Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. Nothing in Battlepope suggested the character was European at all (his manner of speech is distinctly American), but the name 'Leopold Oswald' struck me as suspiciously Germanic (and seemed like a good parallel to John Paul II, the first Polish Pope, who reportedly joked that he'd like to be called Stanislaus before choosing something more conventionally Latin). Posteriora tua immaculata non erit, cum sum ego feci vobiscum should mean "your ass won't be immaculate when I'm done with it." 

David Albizini comes from the obscure British film The Pope Must Die (the title of which made it so predictably controversial that it was later changed to The Pope Must Diet, which is still pretty mean and has nothing to do with the actual plot). Camerlengo Ventresca is from Dan Brown's Angels And Demons, a sequel to his better known The da Vinci Code (though if you watched the movie, you'll probably remember him as Patrick McKenna; apparently nobody felt like listening to Ewan McGregor attempt an Italian accent). 

The Poor-Fellow Soldiers are actually the Knights Templar, discussed later on (we know they exist in the League-verse because Orlando mentions joining them for a time after liking their uniforms). The Priory of Sion existed in real life, probably, but has mutated into a group cited by conspiracy theorists and featured in The da Vinci Code. The Grail, on the other hand, comes from the comic Preacher (and was probably a parody of the aforementioned Priory). The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword comes from Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. The Knights of St. Hagan come from a Hellboy comic (the author has admitted he was going to use the Templars, but made up a new order so he wouldn't have to sweat historical accuracy). And the Order of St. Dumas is a shadowy organization from Batman comics, usually featuring in the backstory of side character Azrael. 

 

CHAPTER FIVE 

Puto aequum esse quod scis me sentire valde depressum = I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed, Marvin's introductory line in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Lord Of The World is a strange, vaguely paranoiac little work of fiction that resembles the much later Left Behind (which didn't feature in this fic because... well, I just think it's bad. Okay?) and features Catholics being persecuted by a global socialist regime. It's reportedly set in the early 21st century, so 2005 seems okay. The Goodman Jesus-cloning experiment is from James BeauSeigneur's Christ Clone trilogy (another bloody trilogy) in which a clone of Jesus is made from DNA found on the Shroud of Turin... and subsequently becomes the Antichrist. 

Our priestly detectives include Father Brown and Sister Boniface (both from GK Chesterson), Father Koesler (works of William X. Kienzle), Dowling (The Father Dowling Mysteries), Anselm (William Brodrick's Father Anselm series), Chambers (Grantchester) and Cadfael from Edith Pargeter's The Cadfael Chronicles (him losing his head was meant to be a Highlander reference. He probably was not an Immortal in the original books. Probably. But the McLeods were certainly not going to sit out my Who's Who of famous fictional Catholics. I could see Cadfael running a sanctuary for Immortals retiring from The Game). 

 

CHAPTER SIX 

Sicut ludens loqui = probably the closest to "just joking" that you can get in Latin. Sister Mary Stigmata is from The Blues Brothers (which is Chicago, not New York. But oh well) and Mike O'Sullivan is the archbishop who appears at the Mayor's office in the last leg of the movie Ghostbusters. 

Pope Francis actually was on the receiving end of a spurious lawsuit from a group claiming to be the rightful successors to the Knights Templar (thrown out since, of course, they couldn't prove it). The Templars are indeed believed to have had a large treasure, and what became of it is the source of a lot of speculation and conspiracism. It did indeed go to the Freemasons in the National Treasure film series; the Count of Monte Cristo discovered it in the 2024 movie version; the 'symbolic' treasure is more da Vinci Code, in which the Holy Grail is revealed to be... not actually a cup. The ugly bird statue is, of course, The Maltese Falcon (which in the original book was a Hospitaller treasure, not a Templar one, but the movie adaptation apparently didn't realize the difference). The International Money Council was a cover for the modern day secretly-still-existing Templars in Don Rosa's Donald Duck comics. 

Giles Amaury is not a real Grandmaster of the Templars, but he appears in Walter Scott's The Talisman (the book was adapted into a movie called King Richard And The Crusaders in 1954, which curiously decided to call the order the 'Castlers' instead of the Templars). Scott also wrote the more famous Ivanhoe, which featured another fictional Templar grandmaster called Lucas de Beaumanoir. Just... so you know. 

 

CHAPTER SEVEN 

Sors est quasi architriclinus qui ordinem tuum iniuriam accipit = fate is like a waiter who gets your order wrong. A similar phrase turns up in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. 

Benitez's ministry was in Saudi Arabia in the book, and Afghanistan in the film; I split the difference with Qumar (from The West Wing) and its capital Jabal Nafusa. Paul-Ul-Don is a location in the Tarzan novels, inhabited by dinosaurs (including bizarrely flying Triceratops); while Tarzan's version of Africa is hard to map, fans often place Pal-Ul-Don as near the Belgian Congo. Fortunati Memorial Hospital was a nod to The Nun's Story (originally a novel by Kathryn Hulme). 

Cardinal Glick comes from the View Askew movie Dogma, where he was played by George Carlin. Raymond Stanz is another Ghostbusters reference, of course; one of the subtle touches of Ray's character is that he was played as a man who had once believed in God, but lost his faith, which is why he speaks dismissively of God ("never met him") before quoting the Bible from memory in one scene. In the Ackroyd-approved Ghostbusters III video game, he wistfully remembers playing tabletop games at seminary. Matthai(as) Reese becomes Pope in the light novel A Certain Magical Index.  

Apologies to a handful of religious authorities who could not be snuck into the story: Father Mulcahy of MASH, Sister Bertrile The Flying Nun, the pope's Inquisitor Judge patrols from Judge Dredd, and Edmund Blackadder (who became Archbishop of Canterbury in the first series... but I'm not sure how you squeeze Anglicans into this one).