There is no sex or nudity in this film. A main subplot is an extramarital affair between George, a married man, and youthful single Chiara. They are seen dancing together in a Rome nightclub and meeting at a zoo. A reporter friend suggests meeting her at a cathedral and that he learned how to do these things while at the Press Club.

Kiril's describes how inmates in the Siberian camp that he was confined in were brutalized (i.e. a man's jaw was broken) and starved and how Kiril almost killed a guard to get food to that man. Discussions about possible nuclear war and Telemond's controversial writings include references to a Stone Age man killing another man with an axe to his skull (the skull was a relic in the Vatican's museum) as to whether it was right or wrong in the Christian sense.

Very little, one possible use of "damn" and "hell".

The reporter's wife, a doctor of all people!, smokes, as does her reporter husband and some of the cardinals (one is shown with a cigar). Kamanev offers Kiril some vodka (Kiril accepts) and drinks some himself. Drinking and smoking is also shown in the Rome nightclub where Faber is dancing with Chiara. Drinking alcoholic beverages and smoking tobacco was not considered contrary to being a good person or even being religious as some may see it now. Even now, although smoking is considered setting a bad example, drinking alcohol in moderation is not seen as wrong except by fundamentalists.

Werner's character dies in Kiril's arms of a hemorrhage, shortly after his writings were censured by the pontifical council. The world is on the edge of nuclear war, like real life's Cuban Missile Crisis earlier in this decade.