Cardinal Lamberto left Rome with a large sum of money and several documents. Fearing that their corruption will be exposed, Keinszig, Lucchesi, and Gilday plot to murder the Pope. Gilday poisons the pontiff's tea, killing him in his sleep. The character of Lamberto and the film's depiction of the events which led to his murder are based upon one of the conspiracy theories surrounding the sudden death of the real-life Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani. Like the Lamberto character, Luciani was discovered dead in his bed in 1978, 33 days after his election to the papacy. Various theories, such as the
Byzantine Papacy Creed, condemning Pope Honorius and the other proponents of monothelitism. Over the next ten years, reconciliation increased the power of papacy: the church of Ravenna abandoned its claim to independent status (formerly endorsed by Constans II), imperial taxation was lessened, and the right of papal confirmation was delegated from Constantinople to the Exarch of Ravenna. It was during this period that the Papacy began "thinking of the Universal Church not as the sum of individual churches as the East did, but as synonymous with the Roman Church". Pope Agatho, a Greek Sicilian, started "a nearly unbroken succession of Eastern pontiffs