Conclave

An insider's perspective

Credit

In a few days, on May 7^th, a conclave will begin to elect a new pope.

The 2025 movie Conclave is a window into this historic moment. With outstanding performances (Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini) and an Oscar winning plot and script^[1] it’s well-worth watching.

In this article I argue that the movie Conclave represents real life Catholicism, so let me begin with a true story (paraphrased from memory) told by one of the cardinals who will be voting in the actual conclave which starts on Wednesday.^[2]

Driving through the crowds in Rio de Janeiro in the popemobile, Pope Francis passed by a group of enthusiastic Argentinians and asked the driver to stop the car.^[3] Seized by the moment, the pope accepted a mate—a traditional herbal drink—offered by the crowd, and drank it. Later, the security detail gave the pope a serious reprimand, visibly alarmed by the breach of protocol. The pope listened patiently and then responded with characteristic humor: “Why are you so concerned? These are Argentinians, not Cardinals!”

The pope’s words caricature what everyone already knows - that intrigue and power mediate the intersection of religion with politics. While not a comedy, the movie is a political thriller that centers on the same theme. With decades of professional experience serving the Catholic Church I find that the film Conclave brilliantly captures three key aspects of ecclesial life: politics, corruption, and grace.

I will comment on each of them below.

Politics

The author of Conclave (the book), Robert Harris, was writing a trilogy of novels on Cicero when he noted how the 2013 conclave’s political process (governed by men looking both holy and cynical) eerily resembled the Roman Republic: “I just thought it was absolutely riveting, politics in the raw." While numerous secular critics have praised Conclave, Catholic media outlets have protested its’ unfair portrayal of cardinals as “little men” engaged in political maneuvering.

Actual popes, however, suggest that Harris’s politically infused view is more correct (though incomplete, more on that later) than a piously sanitized ecclesiology. Pope Francis specifically called the Roman Curia (the Vatican’s governance) “the last royal court” of Europe marked by “intrigue, gossip, cliques, favoritism and preferences.” Pope Paul VI has an excellent exchange with his friend, the philosopher Jean Guitton, where he explains how being a good and skillful politician is part and parcel of a bishops calling.

Politics is inherent to social life, and therefore ecclesial life (including conclaves) and this in principle should scandalize no one. My suspicion is that when pious Catholics disapprove of ‘politics’ in the Church (and in Conclave) what they really spurn, with reason, is another inevitable dimension of human nature: corruption.

Corruption

Conclave portrays several instances of corruption in the Church, but if anything, the movie underplays the reality of it. Some research…

Before and after the Second Vatican Council (60’s), psychologists Anna Terruwe and Conrad Baars warned the pope and cardinals about the danger of unhealthy candidates in Catholic seminaries with serious “emotional and psychosexual immaturity,” with only 10-15% of all priest in Western Europe and North America being emotionally mature.^[4] The consequences of immaturity manifested in chronic alcoholism, neuroses, homosexual and heterosexual activity (an issue because priests make vows to the contrary) and other activities that prevented them from being “happy men and effective priests”. The low rates of emotionally mature men explain, in part, the high odds of dysfunctional and corrupt church leaders. Do the math, some of the cardinals in the conclave today are these same seminarians from the 60’s (if they’re among the 10-15% we know not).

Last year a senior ecclesial leader gave me a statistical breakdown of the health of the presbyterate in a prominent US Catholic diocese, and it resembled Terruwe and Baars diagnosis very closely. My impression is many of the laity have no idea how pervasive corruption is among ecclesial leadership still today. I have met several corrupt (and condemned) bishops and cardinals, and the only bishop that I knew well and respected resigned - because of systemic corruption. Bleak, but not the last word.

Grace (and integrity)

With all the corruption, the Catholic Church is still going, and in part due to leaders of integrity. Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis both have shown great integrity in their actions to combat ecclesial abuse (though these efforts are still quite insufficient when measured against the challenge). The movie does a great job of showing integrity among cardinals, and nuns. When (real life) Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor read the book Conclave, he sent the author a ‘fan letter’ saying, “This is exactly what a conclave is like. Your central cardinal is exactly as we cardinals would wish to be.”

Integrity doesn’t do away with personal weakness, nor institutional corruption. What the movie Conclave depicts marvelously, and with subtlety, is how grace - the Holy Spirit - works through human frailty and how grace is drawn to integrity like a magnet (for the opposite see 1 Timothy 1:19-20). The film suggests that divine grace can emerge from the chaos of political games and corruption, echoing Pope Francis's emphasis on the "concreteness" of faith. The Holy Spirit is present in human life as it is, and also in a stained and broken church.

Finale

To summarize Conclave, I’ll refer to the words of the late great theologian and cardinal, Jean Danielou, whose life and death were both exemplary and mysterious. Closing his Memoirs, and I paraphrase, Danielou said that with so much corruption and weakness in its two millenniums the proof of the Holy Spirit’s action in the life of church is that it is still alive. That the Catholic Church remains standing is proof enough of God’s intervention!

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^[1]Conclave received seven Oscar nominations and won one Oscar for best adapted screenplay (adapted from the book with the same name).

^[2] The Cardinal assured the audience of the anecdote’s veracity.

^[3] I was in Rio de Janeiro in 2015, organizing an event on ecology in collaboration with the Vatican on occasion of the Pope Francis’ visit to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

^[4] In the Catholic Church, seminarians become priests, and every bishop and cardinal must be a priest.