Batman #320

Issue Details

Synopsis

THE CURSE OF THE INQUISITOR! From a clipping service, Batman learns of two unusual crimes in a small town in Spain. Two priests have been murdered, one being covered in bronze, the other frozen to death in a meat locker. Things being quiet in Gotham City, he goes to Spain to check out the mystery.   Bruce Wayne finds the aged Cardinal Ramirez haranguing his congregation to leave the sinful elements brought to them by the mass media. But the young Father Pinto opposes Ramirez, contending that the old ways are gone past recalling. That night, while watching over Pinto's residence, Batman encounters police lieutenant Hector Sanchez, who says that he is watching over Pinto since he is the same age as the two dead priests. Cardinal Ramirez appears and denounces the masked Batman as a "tool of the devil." Batman leaves while Sanchez warns him not to "fall prey to the capital sins!"   As Batman approaches Pinto to talk, the Father is murdered by a crossbow bolt. Batman trails the assassin to a supposedly-deserted chapel, where he encounters the killer, Gorko (a dwarf hunchback), and his master, the robed Inquisitor. Batman almost falls prey to a deathtrap, but manages to escape and kayoes Gorko. Later, Batman goes to stop the Inquisitor, who is about to seal another priest inside a bank vault. He unmasks the Inquisitor as Lt. Sanchez, who tipped his hand by mentioning the "capital sins." Batman then realized that each of the priests were murdered in a manner suggesting the seven capital sins. While Sanchez and Batman battle, Gorko appears and accidentally kills Sanchez with a crossbow bolt. Sanchez, who hoped to destroy modernist clerics, gives his last confession to the priest he sought to murder.  Finally, Batman meets Cardinal Ramirez in the confessional booth, and tells him what he has learned from local records. Before he became a priest, Ramirez sired a son, one Hector Sanchez. Batman then leaves Ramirez with a biblical quote, suggesting that his methods are not pure.