Conclave

Directed by Edward Berger ◆ Written by Peter Straughan ◆ Produced by FilmNation Entertainment ◆ Distributed by Focus Features

Pope Francis is dead. Standing over his lifeless corpse, some of his faithful lieutenants weep as one pronounces sedevacante: the seat is vacant. The Chair of Peter in Rome is temporarily empty, and the call is put out for the world’s cardinals to assemble a conclave to select the next Vicar of Christ.

That opening scene of Conclave is a realistic scenario that will occur some day soon, as Pope Francis turns 88 years old this month. Unfortunately, this beautifully shot and affectingly acted thriller about Vatican politics radically departs from reality soon after its opening shots. Director Edward Berger’s artistic skills are sadly exceeded by his wiles as a propagandist, for Conclave is a blatant and unabashed piece of artistic manipulation that laughably portrays the Catholic Church from the twisted perspective of the progressive left.

The central plot involves the machinations of several factions of right- and left-wing cardinals to get their man the top job. Ralph Fiennes plays the film’s protagonist, Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence, the leader of the conclave and a liberal who conspires to get his extreme left-wing friend Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci) elected. The two are in a state of panic because two right-wing factions constitute roughly two-thirds of the College of Cardinals. One is led by an Italian named Tedesco, a “radical traditionalist” who wants to undo the Second Vatican Council. “He will undo 60 years of progress,” Bellini laments. The other is a group of socially conservative Africans led by a cardinal named Adeyemi. “Homophobic,” Bellini concludes, wringing his hands.

At this point in the film, “radical traditionalist” Catholics—indeed, any kind of conservative—may succumb to belly laughs. Conclave in its first act has made a sharp turn into the realm of farce. The reality is that, far from being a supermajority, there are no open traditionalists in the College of Cardinals, and none advocating for the end of Vatican II. Indeed, there are scarcely any merely conservative cardinals—the College and the Vatican itself is dominated by liberals. 

The College of Cardinals has 131 cardinals under the age of 80 who would be eligible to participate in a conclave to choose the next pope (cardinals aged 80 or older are not allowed to vote in papal elections). Of that number, 96 were chosen by Pope Francis. Francis has been one of the most left-wing popes in Church’s history, so much so that he has pranced on the verge of material doctrinal heresy throughout his pontificate; at times, he appears to have traipsed right over the edge. 

Francis has also built a reputation for authoritarianism and is known for punishing his enemies and rewarding his friends. In November 2023, Francis stripped the conservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke of his Vatican apartment and salary and removed him from his leadership of the Order of Malta. Word circulated that he’d done so in response to Burke’s critical comments and because Francis sees Burke as a “source of disunity” in the Church. During the same month, Francis stripped Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, of his bishopric due to his criticism of Francis’s departure from the Church’s traditional teaching. Any conservative or traditionalist has little chance under the current pontificate of being elevated to cardinal.

Earlier this year, an anonymous letter purported to be written by a conservative cardinal was published in an Italian newspaper. Addressed to other cardinals who will eventually vote for Francis’s replacement, the letter complained of the damage done by Francis and his “autocratic, at times seemingly vindictive, style of governance.” Within Francis’s circle, “Candor is not welcome, and its consequences can be unpleasant,” the author wrote.

One can get a sense of how many conservatives are in the College by the report that nine unnamed cardinals discretely attended a conservative meeting in Prague last year. The purpose of this meeting was to organize themselves against Francis’s progressive cardinals and their left-wing agenda, which includes such to-do items as instituting a female clergy and opening up sacramental marriage for homosexual couples.

But in the world of the film Conclave, this timid remnant of conservative cardinals is an overwhelming force that threatens to return the Church to an earlier era of traditional doctrine, devotion, and liturgy. “We must never return to the Latin liturgy,” the left-wing cardinal Bellini vows. “That was an ugly and repressive time,” he says, in which all Catholic wives were “oppressed” by traditional gender roles “and birthed 10 children.” When he becomes pope, “women should play a role in the Curia,” the Church’s governing body.

The film’s portrayal of the right-wing characters is unrelentingly hostile. The traditionalist Tedesco is abusive to his staff, crude in his language, and cynical in his politics. He is also a racist; the only reason that the right-wing factions in the film don’t completely dominate the voting from the start is because Tedesco’s white traditionalists can’t get along with the conservative black Africans. At lunch in the cafeteria between conclave meetings, Tedesco points out to Lawrence that the Church’s unity in diversity is a sham, for each cafeteria table of cardinals is divided by ethnic group and language. If we whites don’t group together, we could get one of those, he tells Lawrence, pointing to a table of African cardinals.

The African cardinals are represented by Adeyemi, who stands for traditional values and, reflecting the feelings of today’s African bishops and priests, has no truck for the homosexual agenda pushed by Western prelates. The film’s plot soon neutralizes Adeyemi when his sexual relationship with an African nun is revealed. Adeyemi breaks down weeping when he is confronted and exposed by Cardinal Lawrence. Lawrence comforts him as he falls apart, and for several minutes the audience gets to watch unfold a left-wing fantasy in which a condescending white liberal gets to counsel a minority about how his backward right-wing views are a result of his repressed sexuality.

Berger directs the audience’s sympathy toward Lawrence; the camera is often suspended over his shoulder as he walks, while the audio picks up his heavy, labored breathing, emphasizing the heavy burden he bears in herding all these feuding cardinals. As vote after vote fails to reach a consensus, Lawrence frets to an assistant, “A long, drawn-out conclave will be seen as proof the Church is in crisis.”

The problem, from Lawrence’s perspective, is all the strong convictions held by the cardinals. He addresses the conclave on its opening day, saying:

There is one sin I fear above all others. Certainty is the enemy of unity and tolerance. Our truth is a loving thing because it walks hand in hand with doubt. Let us pray to God to give us a pope who doubts.

Indeed, the film reveals that before the pope’s death, Lawrence had submitted his resignation because he no longer believed in God and had stopped praying. The pope refused his resignation and confided in Lawrence that he, too, had lost faith, “not in God, but in his Church.”

The deceased pope had other secrets up his sleeve. One of them resolves the film’s plot in the film’s most risible example of leftist wish fulfillment. Be warned: what follows are spoilers.

It turns out that the prior pope had secretly appointed a cardinal to Kabul, where this mystery man has been ministering, in liberal ecumenical fashion, to Afghanistan’s Muslim population, since the country has almost no Catholics. This Cardinal Benitez is the only figure in the film portrayed as saintly. Even though he is completely unknown and is not campaigning for the papacy, Benitez starts to accumulate supporters who want to elevate him.

Then, just as the cardinals’ disputes seem unresolveable, an explosion cracks the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, showering the conclave with rubble. Islamic terrorists have attacked the Barque of Peter. “We house them in our homelands, while they exterminate us,” the traditionalist Tedesco thunders. He calls for a pope who will lead a religious war against the Muslims.

“No, we need to fight hate,” the saintly Benitez responds. And then, revealing himself to be a liberal like Lawrence and Bellini, he says, “The Church is not Tradition. The Church is what we do next.”

The film nears its denouement as the cardinals elect Benitez pope to great acclaim. But Conclave isn’t finished yet. Lawrence receives a delayed report about a medical procedure that the prior pope had arranged for Benitez, but which Benitez declined: a laparoscophic hysterectomy. It turns out that Benitez, now Pope Innocent XIV, is a hermaphrodite with both male and female sexual organs. “I am what God made me,” he shrugs.

Catholics—real Catholics—know that left-wing views about sexuality, gender, the priesthood, and a changing doctrine that departs from Tradition and Scripture, are incompatible with the faith. Unfortunately, unlike Protestants, who stop calling themselves Protestants when they lose the faith, Catholic apostates keep calling themselves Catholic long after they stop believing. We can laugh at films like Conclave because we know that the tares will be separated from the wheat, and the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.