Jude Law commands screen as ‘The Young Pope’

Lenny Belardo is the antithesis of everything we have come to expect in a pope.

Handsome, charming and very American, the 42-year-old New Yorker by way of a Midwest orphanage is a shrewd political operator with an acute sense of self-image, an appetite for power and a knack for determining who his enemies are. As the newly installed Pius XIII, he’s also in search of a God he can present to the masses — and to himself — in “The Young Pope,” a 10-episode limited series premiering Sunday on HBO.

“God is probably his closest friend, his confidante, his guide,” explains the British actor who plays Lenny, Oscar nominee Jude Law (“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Cold Mountain”). “Also, he has a complex relationship with him. I mean, here’s a guy who I think never had a family and so grew up feeling unloved. God became a sort of stand-in parental role and so he has a direct dialogue with him and it’s his sort of be-all and end-all. Don’t mistake his doubts or his disbelief in rejection. It’s more about him wanting to sort of take (his faith) to another level, in my opinion.”

Lenny is also a guy who is determined to do things his way. That starts with his choice of his chief adviser, Sister Mary (Oscar winner Diane Keaton, “Annie Hall”), who raised him at the orphanage. Lenny ascended to the papacy thanks to the efforts of the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Voiello (Silvio Orlando, “The Caiman”), who mistakenly believed the new pontiff would follow his more liberal lead on policy and protocol.

And he leapfrogged many older candidates, including his mentor, Cardinal Michael Spencer (Oscar nominee James Cromwell, “Babe”), who is very bitter and resentful toward Lenny about being passed over.

The opening sequence gives a good idea of what to expect. As Pius XIII delivers his first homily at St. Peter’s Square, the clouds part as he extols the virtues of birth control, gay marriage and women in the priesthood – hot-button Catholic issues all – to a roaring crowd and a shocked and befuddled Vatican conclave. Then he wakes up from his dream and we come to learn over the course of events that, well, he doesn’t really believe all that. Or does he?

“The dream sequence is sort of an opportunity to see his deepest fears,” Law explains. “It’s also a wonderful piece of (misdirection) by the writer and director in (that) people assume, ‘Oh, this is of course what this young pope is going to be like. He’s going to be liberal and he’s going to be revolutionary in breaking down all those barriers or rules of past Catholic guidelines and of course, it’s not. It’s the opposite.”

As Pius starts his reign, he assigns Sister Mary to shadow Voiello, whom he distrusts after the older man expressed dismay at the pope’s conservative agenda. He also tells Vatican marketing director Sofia Dubois (Cecile De France, “Hereafter”) that his goal as pope is to be invisible, reasoning that many important figures in world history kept low profiles and thus were mysterious. So for him, that means lights low during public appearances, no photos and no Pius XIII images on Vatican merchandise.

He puffs away on a cigarette as he explains this. While it’s hard to envision someone as holy as the pope partaking in such a ruinous habit, there is a purpose for it being there beyond simply showing that these people who aspire to do God’s work are indeed human.

“It is also kind of a layer of (defense to) keep people back,” Law says. “It’s a sort of prop for him to hide behind.” And so begins the reign of Pius XIII — mysterious and contradictory with some smoke and mirrors.