“He says hello to all of us and shook 150 hands the other day,” Mr. Friscotti said.

An extra in a priest’s collar added that Mr. Pryce, who plays Francis, was a nice guy, too, and recalled that when they were filming a dining scene in the Royal Palace of Caserta, he “was throwing bread all around.” Mr. Pryce, he said, also had the advantage of looking exactly like Francis.

“A dead ringer,” said Enzo Massacci, 67, a retired railroad employee who was himself a dead ringer for a Borgia cardinal.

After lunch, the production crew led a procession of pretend prelates, Swiss Guards, nuns and Vatican gendarmes under the arches of the Passetto di Borgo and across Via dei Corridori. They turned right on Via della Conciliazione, the broad thoroughfare that spills out onto St. Peter’s Basilica, where tourists and pilgrims filmed them and waved.

The extras skirted along the outside of Bernini’s colonnade, where they stopped across the street from three tents, under which the show’s stars and crew huddled.

Alfiero Toppetti, 76, dressed as a cardinal, leaned against the railing and stared at the tents as a counterfeit clergyman droned on at his side.

“In cinema, the less you talk,” he told him, “the better it is.”

A veteran actor who has appeared in several Italian movies and television variety shows, Mr. Toppetti stood still as a makeup artist fixed his hair and zucchetto and explained that, hailing as he did from Assisi, the home of St. Francis, he couldn’t resist the chance to portray a cardinal, even though the pay wasn’t great. “We do it for love,” he said. “A sacrifice.”