‘Conclave’: Electoral Fight for Christianity’s Future

The release of Conclave mere weeks before the U.S. presidential election is no accident. This is a movie about the high-stakes, contentious selection process of a new leader at a time of widening political division. The drama of Conclave includes candidates, campaigning, endorsements, ballot boxes, a “college” of electors, secret conversations in dimly lit halls of power, and even jarring attempts to undermine the democratic process. Sure, Conclave isn’t about selecting a new president; it’s about selecting a new pope. But the parallels are obvious and intentional.

Directed by Edward Berger and adapted from the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, Conclave seems to suggest the contemporary Roman Catholic Church is just as corrupt and broken as American democracy, and just as driven by the egos of overconfident men and their appetites for power. While it makes some fair points, in the end Conclave’s potency is compromised by its inability to conceal clear bias in a certain direction.

Electoral Parallels

I enjoyed Berger’s last film, 2022’s Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front. But that film was heavy-handed in forcing its point in unsubtle ways. Unfortunately, the same tendency bogs down Conclave.

The fictional film follows a papal conclave that happens in the wake of a beloved pope’s death. Most of the drama takes place within the Vatican’s walls as the College of Cardinals gathers to elect a new bishop of Rome. The cardinals spend several days going through multiple secret ballot votes until a candidate wins at least a two-thirds majority of votes. All of it is totally hidden from the public and the press, save the black or white smoke that emanates from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney, indicating a failed vote or successful election of a new pope.

Sure, Conclave isn’t about selecting a new president; it’s about selecting a new pope. But the parallels are obvious and intentional.

Much of this is interesting to watch, even as a Protestant believer who finds the papacy and the Roman Catholic idea of apostolic succession unbiblical. The film’s inside look at such a secretive but long-held tradition is Conclave’s greatest strength.

A troupe of excellent actors enhances the drama’s prestige: The excellent Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, who presides over the conclave and allies with liberal cardinals like Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci). Both are contenders to be the next pope, as are Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) and Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati). The film is at its best when it subtly observes these men’s characters and allows the audience to discern their integrity (or lack thereof), particularly whether they’re more defined by humility or ambition.

Many times, though, the film oversells its political parallels. One character says, “I feel like I’m at some American political convention.” Another makes a comment obviously directed straight at the American viewer in 2024: “Is this what we’re reduced to, voting for the least-worst option?”

The conclave’s primary factions fall roughly along a progressive/conservative split that mirrors American politics. To be sure, there is a divide in the Catholic Church between those who prioritize conserving tradition and those who seek an updated, more inclusive church. But in Conclave, this split doesn’t concern theology as much as it does the issues driving American politics.

One giveaway is the character Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), the Trump-esque conservative candidate campaigning on a platform of traditionalism and nationalism (essentially “Make the papacy Italian again!”). He has an ostentatious swagger about him and doesn’t mince words as he critiques the previous pope and decries encroaching liberalism. When incidents of Islamist terror happen outside the Vatican walls over the course of the conclave, Tedesco uses the opportunity to ratchet up the us-versus-them rhetoric his liberal opponents despise.

The liberal cardinals respond to Tedesco in the way American progressives respond to Trump. They say things like “We liberals have to unite against him!” and “It’s a war!” They argue a Tedesco victory would undo decades of progress and send Rome back to the dark ages.

Watching Conclave, it’s hard to imagine actual cardinals talking about one another in these ways, demonizing “the other side” with brazen partisan rhetoric. But this film doesn’t attempt to accurately reflect the Catholic Church’s reality as much as to land points about the type of Christianity it doesn’t like (traditional/conservative) and the type it hopes will prevail (progressive).

Post-Christian Desire for a Doubting Church

Conclave is a cultural product of the post-Christian West. On one hand, it appreciates the church’s aesthetics. The film’s cinematography (often lingering on the Sistine Chapel’s beauty) and elegant black-white-red color palette suggest some fondness for the church’s contribution to culture. On the other hand, the drama’s shadowy vibes and menacing music underscore a posture of skepticism toward institutional Christianity.

Berger goes out of his way to observe the marginalization (and silence) of women in contrast to the consolidation of power among men—a move intended to associate the church with predatory patriarchy. He comedically lingers in one scene on a deferential curtsy by a nun (played brilliantly by the great Isabella Rossellini) that speaks volumes.

This conflicted approach perfectly captures the post-Christian mood. The pomp and circumstance of it all is endearing, and some of the Christian characters’ virtues are laudable; but the church’s institutional authority and beliefs (particularly its gender dynamics) are disdained.

Conclave is a cultural product of the post-Christian West.

It’s not that the filmmakers want the church to go away entirely. They just want a church that matches their progressive views. This becomes clearer and clearer as the movie goes on. A theme starts to emerge around the goodness of doubt and the virtue of uncertainty. “Let us pray for a pope who doubts,” one cardinal says in a pivotal sermon. “Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.”

“Certainty” is framed in Conclave (as it often is by progressive Christians) as the most egregious sin. Traditions must be questioned and long-held beliefs challenged. The church isn’t the past, one liberal cardinal asserts; the church “is what we do next.” He might as well have been advocating for a church defined by “what can be, unburdened by what has been.”

Of course, reform is valuable in the church. We Protestants know this well (Happy early Reformation Day!). But elevating uncertainty to the highest value isn’t a recipe for healthy reform and an enduring church. Conclave is correct to assert the fallibility of the church’s human leadership. But too often a healthy skepticism about human authority sets the stage for a doubt of all authority and eventually a deconstruction of faith.

Uncertainty can be weaponized as a destroyer of whatever tradition we don’t like. Appealing to examples of corrupt church leaders becomes an excuse to throw all church leadership—and their interpretation of Scripture—into question. Sober realism about church leadership is one thing, but a “doubting church” free-for-all is more progressive wish-fulfillment than a realistic course. It’s impossible to build on a foundation that’s ambiguous, shifting, and basically up for grabs. That’s precisely the sort of future Conclave wants to build for the church.

Between Certainties

Major spoiler follows. In the end, Conclave underscores its position by who it has “winning” the papal election. The victor is a dark-horse, mysterious candidate who wasn’t even on the original invite list: Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who has led Catholics in some of the hardest places in the Middle East (Baghdad, Kabul). He wins because he appears to be the most humble, Jesus-like servant leader—decidedly not seeking power.

Elevating uncertainty to the highest value isn’t a recipe for healthy reform and an enduring church.

But here’s the twist: Benitez isn’t a he at all. “He” has a uterus and ovaries. He’s intersexual, having been “assigned” male at birth and living as a man, even though he later discovered he had female reproductive organs.

When Lawrence discovers the secret and confronts Benitez, the new pope (who tellingly chooses the name Pope Innocent XIV) says, “I am what God made me,” a familiar line in the LGBT+ movement. “I know what it is to exist between the world’s certainties,” he adds, in a binary-defying statement intended to be the film’s mic-drop line.

Lawrence is deeply shaken, but it’s too late. Benitez is the new pope: history’s first female—or at least gender ambiguous—head of the Catholic Church. It’s a zinger of an ending, not only because the joke is on 2,000 years of “patriarchy” but because the wishes for a church built on uncertainty come true in the most vivid, potentially catastrophic of ways. The new pope embodies uncertainty and doubt, his very biology apparent evidence that God isn’t interested in clear binaries and easy certainties.

Again, however, this is just a progressive fantasy with no grounding in the realities of biblical theology on topics like gender and sexuality and humanity as male and female. Still, it’s telling that a major Hollywood film casts a vision like this. I’m not sure mainstream audiences will buy it. But if they do, it’ll be further evidence of how much work Christians have to do—on the topic of gender and sexuality but also on the issues of ecclesial authority and doctrinal certainty.

There are legitimate questions to ask about power and leadership abuse in the church, of course, and about how these things leave a trail of dechurching casualties and declining trust in theological traditions. When one character says of the late pope that he never doubted God but doubted the church, he’s describing a widespread sentiment among many Christians clinging to God in spite of the church. These are good questions to ask, important conversations to have. But hopefully, we can come to better answers than what Conclave offers.