A Most Holy Man Recap

He breaks the glass and removes the skull, but before he can escape with it, a nun enters and discovers him. The man hits the nun, knocking her unconscious. Then he utters (presumably in Maltese) “So sorry, Mother. Please forgive me.” and leaves with the skull.

EPISODE:

Dean and Sam are in the bunker’s kitchen. Dean is eating cold pizza he found in the refrigerator, and Sam is using his laptop to research the ingredients they need for their spell. As they talk, we learn that Castiel is in Syria looking for the Tree of Life, and the Boys don’t have any good leads on most of the other ingredients. Sam surmises that the “blood of a most holy man” may mean the blood of a saint, and he has been browsing online auctions of religious relics to find someone who may have such an item. He finds a dealer in San Francisco named Margaret Astor who may have the item, so the Boys head to San Francisco to meet with her.

In San Francisco, the Winchesters meet Margaret Astor in an upscale bar. They learn that she doesn’t have the item they’re looking for, but she gives them the name of another dealer who might -- Richard Greenstreet in Seattle, Washington. She also warns the brothers not to trust Greenstreet.

The Winchesters head to Seattle and arrive in Greenstreet’s study. Greenstreet realizes the Winchesters aren’t wealthy, so he disrespects them and sends them away. Before the brothers leave, Greenstreet changes his mind. He tells them that an item he values, the skull of Saint Peter, was stolen from its ancestral home in Malta and he wants it recovered. Greenstreet believes the thief who stole the skull was working for Santino Scarpatti – a well-known mafia kingpin in Seattle. Greenstreet tells the Winchesters that if they can recover the skull, he will give them the blood of Saint Ignatius as payment. Greenstreet says the skull will be turned over to Scarpatti the following night, but he doesn’t know where the exchange will take place, or the name of the thief who stole the skull. The Winchesters reluctantly agree to the deal.

The Winchesters head to a coffee house in Seattle to discuss their next move. Sam hacks into airline records and searches anyone who traveled from Malta to Seattle recently. He finds only five people who made such a trip, and one of them – a man named Antonio Meile -- has a questionable past. The Boys decide that Meile is their best lead, so they head to the hotel he checked into the day before.

The Winchesters arrive at Meile’s hotel (the Princess Hotel) and head upstairs. On the way into the elevator, Sam accidentally bumps into a man who looks at him strangely. Sam brushes off the incident and he and Dean continue upstairs. When they arrive in Meile’s room, they find the man dead and the room trashed as if someone hastily searched it.

While the Winchesters are standing over Meile’s body, a man who pretends to be a plain-clothed cop arrives and draws his gun on them.

Before the Boys have a chance to explain anything, the man – at gunpoint -- orders them to handcuff themselves to the radiator. As the Winchesters comply, the man hastily begins searching the room instead of calling his precinct to report a dead body, so the Boys realize he’s not really a cop. The man, annoyed that he hasn’t found what he’s looking for, tells Dean and Sam that he’s leaving to call in the crime, and leaves the Boys handcuffed to the radiator.

As soon as the man leaves, Dean and Sam free themselves and leave the hotel. In the lobby, they pass the man Sam bumped into on the elevator, but they don’t see or recognize him. The man watches them leave the hotel.

Outside the hotel, Dean and Sam approach the Impala, parked in an alley behind the building. Before they can get into the car, they are approached by a group of men carrying guns. At gunpoint, the men tell the Winchesters that Mr. Scarpatti wants to see them. They force the Boys into the back of the Impala and head to Scarpatti’s house. As the cars pull away, we see the suspicious man from the elevator and lobby watching the encounter.

At Scarpatti’s house, the mobster is surprised that the Winchesters – especially Dean – aren’t more afraid of him. Nevertheless, he makes them a deal. He admits that he knows about their deal with Greenstreet, but tells them that Greenstreet is a scoundrel who has no reverence for religious objects. Sam reveals that Greenstreet agreed to give them what they’re looking for if they get the skull for him, but Scarpatti dismisses this, admonishing the Boys for making a “devil’s bargain” with Greenstreet. Scarpatti maintains that he had the skull stolen because he thought it belonged in his home, which he considers a more suitable place than the monastery. However, the skull is missing, so he offers the Winchesters a handsome sum of money to recover it for him. He says they can use the money to pay for whatever they were trying to get from Greenstreet. Since the Winchesters realize they can’t refuse, they agree to Scarpatti’s deal.

The Winchesters return to the hotel, since Dean believes the key to the case is in Meile’s hotel room. Of course, because of the murder, the downstairs lobby and the corridor outside Meile’s room are swarming with police officers. While Dean pulls fire alarms to get people to evacuate the building, Sam sneaks into Meile’s room during the diversion. While Sam is searching the room, he finds a piece of paper with some numbers scribbled on it.

As he’s examining the paper, he gets knocked out by the man who has been watching the Winchesters all night. Moments later, Dean arrives and finds Sam on the floor.

Outside the hotel, we see the man who knocked Sam out leaving hastily. He is carrying a briefcase. He heads down the alley next to the hotel, and we see that he is being followed by a man with a gun – the fake cop who handcuffed Dean and Sam.

Next, we see Dean and Sam leaving the hotel. Suddenly, they hear a commotion in the alley. They rush to the area to find the man who knocked Sam out lying unconscious on the ground. The man regains consciousness and the Winchesters take him into the hotel lobby to interrogate him.

Sam demands to know where the piece of paper is, but the man says he doesn’t know – he surmises that the man who knocked him out took it. The Winchesters question the man further and discover that his name is Father Luca Camilleri. He is a priest from the parish in Malta where the skull was stolen from. The nuns at the monastery collected all the money the parish had and sent Fr. Camilleri to the United States to buy Saint Peter’s skull back from the man who stole it. When Meile disappeared from the village at the same time the skull did, Fr. Camilleri surmised that Meile had stolen the relic, so he followed Meile to Seattle. When Camilleri arrived at Meile’s hotel room and found him dead, he didn’t know what to do. But then the Winchesters showed up, so he thought they might be able to lead him to the skull. As they’re talking, Father Camilleri laments that he feels like he failed his parish, who put a great deal of faith in his ability to retrieve the skull. Still, he has faith that good people can make the world a better place, even though bad people do bad things.

Father Camilleri explains that the relic means everything to his congregation, so Sam wants to help him get it back. Dean reminds Sam that doing so means double-crossing Scarpatti, and may also mean they don’t get the blood of the saint that Greenstreet promised. But Sam (through his research) has discovered that Father Camilleri has devoted most of his life to charity work and is a good man, so the Winchesters agree to help him.

In the Impala, the Winchesters and Fr. Camilleri try to decide on their next move. Father Camilleri remembers the numbers on the paper, and when Sam researches the numbers, they discover that it’s a tracking number for a package that was sent from Valetta, Malta to Seattle. They head to the shipping company and stake the place out in time to see the fake cop arrive with the slip of paper. He collects the object and heads to a warehouse; the Winchesters and Father Camilleri follow in the Impala.

The fake cop arrives at the warehouse and is soon joined by Margaret Astor. As they enter the building and talk, we learn that Astor paid the fake cop (Cromarty) to steal the skull for her. When they get inside, Santino Scarpatti and his thugs are already there. During a hostile exchange, we learn that Astor had Meile killed, so she could steal the skull from him and auction it off for money. When Scarpatti balks at the idea of having to pay for the relic, Richard Greenstreet steps out of the shadows and joins the conversation. Astor says that if Scarpatti won’t pay her for the skull, Greenstreet will. Cromarty opens the shipping box, and everyone present sees the skull for the first time.

As the three parties throw verbal barbs at one another, Sam enters the room, carrying the suitcase of money Camilleri brought to try to buy back the skull. As Sam is talking, we see that his cell phone is on, so Dean and Fr. Camilleri can hear what is happening.

Outside in the Impala, Dean and Father Camilleri wait for confirmation from Sam that he’s in the room. As soon as they hear that, they sneak into the building and Dean disables the guards so he can get inside to back Sam up. Dean tells Fr. Camilleri to remain outside.

Inside the warehouse, the situation quickly gets out of control. Greenstreet and Scarpatti realize Sam has double-crossed them, but Margaret Astor convinces them that Sam’s money is as good as anyone else’s so he is allowed to bid on the skull. Sam’s bid is comparatively low (approx $600,000), but it is unfortunately the entire wealth of the parish in Valetta, Malta, so he can’t bid any higher. Scarpatti bids 3 million dollars, and the group waits anxiously to hear Greenstreet’s bid. Greenstreet shocks everyone by bidding nothing; but then we learn that Cromarty has been secretly working for Greenstreet all along. Cromarty shoots and kills Margaret Astor, which ignites a shootout in which everyone is killed except for Greenstreet.

Father Camillleri initially waits outside during the shootout, praying. But he eventually enters just in time to see Cromarty aim his gun at Dean. Father Camilleri grabs Cromarty’s arm and they struggle for the gun. In the struggle, Camilleri gets shot in the abdomen, and Sam shoots and kills Cromarty. Dean and Sam rush over to Camilleri, and are relived to discover that he was only grazed and not seriously injured.

Dean, Sam, and Father Camilleri find Greenstreet crouched behind a counter, hiding from the gunfight. When the Winchesters confront him and demand the blood of Saint Ignatius, Greenstreet reluctantly admits that he was lying about having the blood. Dean punches Greenstreet, knocking him out, but leaves him alive. Later, we see the warehouse swarming with police, and Greenstreet handcuffed as he is loaded into the back of a police car.

EPILOGUE:

Dean and Sam take Father Camilleri to the airport, and they talk briefly before he leaves. During the discussion, Sam comments that he has researched the priest and discovered that he is an “apostolic protonotary supernumerary”. When he asks the priest what the term means, Camilleri tells him that the title is one the pope awards to certain priests who perform good works. When Dean expresses amazement that Fr. Camilleri met the pope, the priest admits sheepishly that the pope called him “un uomo santissimo”, which translates to “a most holy man”. The Winchesters realize that Camillleri’s blood is what they need for the spell.

Back at the bunker, Dean is in the war room looking at the vial of blood from Father Camilleri. As Sam enters, Dean comments that they have one of the ingredients and still need three more.

As the brothers talk, Sam admits that he feels like they’re constantly playing defense – bouncing from one apocalypse to the next. The brothers comment that it would be nice to someday be able to get rid of all the monsters once and for all, and stop bad things from happening. When Sam asks Dean if he thinks their spell will work, Dean replies that he has faith.