John wants to turn Joe in, but Joe convinces him to wait twenty-four hours. When Joe is told that someone is waiting to see him, he thinks it is the police and is happy the visitor is John, to whom he apologizes. John arrives at the monastery as Joe and McGinniss are listening to a boys choir concert, and Joe is reminded of his days as a choirboy. Unknown to John, Bodulli arranges for policeman Antonio Silesto to follow him. Later, when Bodulli tells John that he will have a policeman pick him up the next day at the Monastery of the Three Saints, where he is registered, John realizes that Joe must be there. Bodulli wants John, who is the only person in Italy who can identify Joe, to help him, but is aware that John is reluctant to be a "stool pigeon." While the two men watch a procession, John is startled but says nothing when he sees Joe carrying a cross and helping a small, elderly priest carry his.
When John arrives in Rome, he checks in with commissioner Aggiunto Bodulli, who speaks English peppered with Western idioms learned while a POW in Texas during the war. Viewing the humble cells of the monks, Joe finds the quarters eerily reminiscent of San Quentin, but is content to have a hideout. Meanwhile, Joe is befriended by Irishman Father McGinniss, who obtains a room for "Father John" in the Monastery of the Three Saints. After being outfitted in new ecclesiastic clothing, John leaves for Rome with instructions to help the local police capture Joe. At the police station, the commissioner assumes that John is Joe, until John recites the Preface to the Latin Mass, something only a priest could do. When John awakens, he must leave the boat in Joe's flashy clothes and is immediately arrested. The priests whisk Joe away to see the local sights, then place him aboard a bus filled with clerics bound for Rome. Joe's disguise fools them, as well as two priests who have come to meet John. Joe, who was reared a Catholic, strikes up a friendship with John, but when the boat docks in Genoa, Joe steals his sleeping roommate's suitcase and disembarks in John's cassock to avoid waiting police. Halligan bunks with Joe Brewster, an affable conman who, unknown to John, has escaped from San Quentin. On a voyage to Italy for the 1950 Holy Year celebrations, Pennsylvania priest John X.