Picking a new pope: How accurate is ‘Conclave’ the movie?

Catholic cardinals have announced that the conclave to choose Pope Francis’s successor will begin on May 7. The secret vote was delayed by two days so that the cardinals could get to know one another better and try to agree on a suitable candidate before entering the Sistine Chapel.

There is always speculation when a new pope is to be chosen.

While the conclave could have started on May 5, the cardinals opted to take extra time for informal talks. These sessions also included cardinals over the age of 80, though they would not be allowed to take part in the vote once the conclave begins.

Francis, like his predecessors, upheld the Church’s rule that women cannot be ordained as priests, which means they cannot become pope. According to Catholic doctrine, it is reserved for men since Jesus chose only men to be his 12 apostles. This teaching is considered to be guided by divine truth and cannot be changed.

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Francis died on April 21 at the age of 88. He suffered a stroke that left him in a coma and led to heart failure.

Born in Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio became known for bringing a sense of renewal to the Catholic Church. At the time of his election, the Church was seen to be losing influence, especially during the leadership of Benedict XVI. Benedict’s unexpected resignation cleared the path for Francis to become pope.

Notably, the College of Cardinals, which will vote in the upcoming conclave , includes members from all over the world. Many of them were appointed by Francis during his 12 years as pope, often moving away from the Church’s more traditional centres to bring in new viewpoints.

Technically, any baptised Catholic man can become pope, even cardinals over 80, though they cannot vote if they are not present in the room. Still, only cardinals have been chosen since 1378.

Ahead of the conclave, public interest has grown, partly due to the 2024 film ‘Conclave’ , a political thriller that shows the process of electing a pope.

The movie, though dramatic, helped many people learn about the rules and traditions of the selection, adding a Hollywood twist filled with suspense and secrets.

While some critics have pointed out where the film falls short, it does show the seriousness of a papal election and touches on the real challenges the Church faces today. Vatican experts, however, say the movie does not get everything right.

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Here’s a look at what Conclave gets right and what it doesn’t about the selection process.

(Spoilers ahead.)

Scenery and aesthetics

The movie excels at re-creating the look and feel of a conclave.

“The film gets a lot right. They tried to reproduce the mise-en-scene of the Vatican accurately,” William Cavanaugh, a Catholic studies professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said in an email. “They show that a lot of the drama is around the preconclave conversations among cardinals.”

It’s not a perfect re-creation, according to the Rev Thomas Reese, a senior analyst with the Religion News Service and a Vatican expert.

He called the movie’s production values “marvellous,” but noted slight discrepancies in the cardinals’ dress.

“The red in the cardinals’ garments was a deep red, while the reality is more orange. Frankly, I like the Hollywood version better,” Reese, a Jesuit priest who wrote “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organisation of the Catholic Church,” said in an email.

Protocols of the papal process

The movie aligns with real-life expectations for a quick conclave, said Massimo Faggioli, a historical theology professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

“A long conclave would send the message of a Church divided and possibly on the verge of a schism. The history of the conclaves in the last century is really a story of short conclaves,” he said via email.

Reese pointed out other discrepancies. While the voting process was depicted accurately, he said, the ballots are burned not after each vote, but after each session, which is typically two votes.

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Holy plot holes

There are a few particularly egregious errors that, if corrected, would lead to a very different movie.

A key character in the film, the archbishop of Kabul, Afghanistan, arrives just before the conclave with paperwork declaring the late pope had made him a cardinal “in pectore” — “in secret” — allowing him to vote for the next pope.

“The biggest mistake in the movie was the admission of a cardinal in pectore into the conclave,” said Reese. “If the name is not announced publicly by the pope in the presence of the College of Cardinals, he has no right to attend a conclave.”

Cavanaugh agreed and noted that while the movie’s twist about the Kabul archbishop was far-fetched, it does point to a certain truth about conclaves.

“The cardinals do not always know who they’re getting when they elect a pope,” he said. “If the cardinals knew how (Jorge Mario) Bergoglio would be as Pope Francis, many of them wouldn’t have voted for him. Pius IX was elected as a liberal and turned into an archconservative. John XXIII was supposed to be a jolly caretaker pope, and he unleashed Vatican II,” a series of modernising reforms.

Another of the movie’s more outlandish storylines involves the dean of the College of Cardinals breaking the seal of the confessional by revealing to another cardinal what a nun confessed to him, said Reese.

“He committed a mortal sin and would be automatically excommunicated. Such an action would be egregiously wrong,” Reese said.

In addition to that, a cardinal paying for votes, as shown in the film, is unheard of in modern times, said Cavanaugh, and the politicking is exaggerated.

And so are the politics

The movie errs in making cardinals into either liberal or conservative champions, said Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

“Those labels don’t help us,” he said, because cardinals are very cautious in expressing their opinions and “even someone we think is a liberal cardinal is pretty conservative by secular standards.”

And he added that even in an unusually large conclave like this year’s, the rule requiring the next pope to win at least a two-thirds majority of the vote ensures that “whatever we call extreme” likely won’t get enough votes.

With inputs from AP