NIGHTCRAWLER

The most deranged anti-mutant scheme ever put on paper did not involve a bomb, a virus or a giant robot. It involved a conclave. The Church of Humanity, a heavily armed hate sect, spent months grooming Nightcrawler for the priesthood — with the long-term goal of steering Kurt Wagner all the way up the Catholic hierarchy until a mutant sat on the throne of St. Peter as Pope.

Kurt never suspected the con because the con was tailored to his soul. A devout Catholic who hid his blue fur, pointed ears and tail behind an image inducer to serve a small congregation, he believed his ordination was real. In truth the Church had manufactured the whole vocation: his mentor Father Whitney was their plant, feeding a lonely believer exactly the calling he had always prayed for.

The endgame, exposed in Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #423–424 (2003), by Chuck Austen and Ron Garney, was pure theatre. Once Pope Kurt was installed, the Church planned to sabotage his image inducer in public — revealing a blue, fanged, devil-looking mutant in the Vatican — and then stage a fake Rapture using communion wafers rigged to disintegrate the faithful who ate them. Mutants would be blamed for delivering the Antichrist, Catholicism would collapse in panic, and the Church of Humanity would inherit the ruins. The X-Men tore the plot down after the cult crucified young mutants on the school lawn — and the sect's Supreme Pontiff turned out to be a former nun with her own grievance against Rome.