Angels & Demons recap

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to CERN after a scientist is murdered and branded with the ancient symbol of the Illuminati, a secret brotherhood long thought extinct. A vial of antimatter, capable of a devastating explosion, has been stolen and hidden somewhere in Vatican City, set to detonate at midnight, just as the cardinals gather to elect a new Pope. With the physicist Vittoria Vetra, Langdon races through Rome following a trail of Illuminati clues hidden in Renaissance art and architecture, while a hired assassin murders four kidnapped cardinals one by one. The seemingly heroic camerlengo, the late Pope's chamberlain, rallies the Church and, in an apparent act of divine courage, flies the antimatter high above the city so it explodes harmlessly in the sky, and Langdon survives a fall from the aircraft. But it is revealed to be an elaborate deception: the camerlengo himself orchestrated the entire plot, murdering the Pope and staging the Illuminati threat to make himself the Church's savior, only to learn that the Pope he killed was secretly his own father. Exposed, the camerlengo takes his own life by fire, and a new Pope is chosen.

Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious symbology, is roused in the middle of the night and summoned urgently to CERN, the European physics laboratory, after a researcher is found murdered and branded with a mysterious symbol tied to the Illuminati, a secret brotherhood believed to have vanished centuries ago. There he learns that a small quantity of antimatter, a substance capable of a catastrophic explosion, has been stolen. The trail points toward Vatican City, where the cardinals are about to gather to elect a new Pope. So begins a desperate race, with a scientist's expertise and Langdon's knowledge of hidden symbols, to prevent an act of terror aimed at the heart of the Catholic Church.

The Illuminati threat is exposed as a fabrication staged from within the Church. The camerlengo, Carlo Ventresca, is revealed to be the mastermind behind everything: he poisoned the Pope, arranged the theft of the antimatter, hired the assassin, and staged a false revival of the Illuminati so that he could appear to save the Church and be swept to power. His climactic rescue of the antimatter, flying it above the city and parachuting to apparent glory while Langdon survives a fall into the Tiber, is part of the performance, including a wound he inflicts on himself to seem divinely marked. On the verge of being acclaimed the next Pope, he is undone when it emerges that the Pope he murdered was his biological father, conceived through artificial insemination so that the pontiff never broke his vow of chastity. Devastated by this truth, Ventresca sets himself ablaze before the crowds in St. Peter's. The elderly Cardinal Mortati, who uncovers and reveals the truth, is elected the new Pope. Langdon and Vittoria survive, and the Church quietly buries the scandal, preserving the illusion of a miracle for the faithful.