What Oscar-nominee ‘Conclave’ gets right — and wrong — about the Vatican

(RNS) — Like a dark horse candidate for the papacy, the movie “Conclave,” a sort of papal procedural drama, has become a late favorite to win the Oscar for Best Picture, possibly outlasting “Emilia Pérez,” a movie musical that ran into a social media scandal, and “Anora,” the comedy-drama about a young sex worker caught up with a Russian oligarch’s family that might be losing pace just before the wire. 

As Pope Francis remains hospitalized in Rome with double pneumonia, “Conclave” is also suddenly topical, as Catholics both worry for Francis’ health and wonder who the cardinals are eyeing as a successor. 

But can “Conclave” really serve as a guide to the real thing?

Vatican observers mostly say yes. While some experts noted some Hollywood tweaks, such as the richer red of the cardinals’ cassocks, “ I think it’s got a lot of the details right,” said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of history and American studies at the University of Notre Dame.

The cardinals’ less-than-angelic behavior feels authentic, Cummings said. “Whenever you have human beings, you have sinful behavior,” said Cummings. “The jockeying and selfishness and the kinds of things that maybe struck us as a bit unsavory is real,” she said, explaining she sees similar dynamics when studying canonization.

Cummings also praised Isabella Rossellini’s Sister Agnes, who plays a pivotal role in the conclave. “ It is true that women in the church are the ones that see and hear things,” and unlike in previous papacies, “ there are female figures who people listen to now at the Vatican,” Cummings said, citing several sisters holding high curial positions.

She cautioned, however, that even a nun was not likely have had free rein near the priests’ bedrooms, as Agnes occasionally does in the movie.

Jim McDermott, a Catholic pop-culture critic who was a Jesuit for more than 30 years, praised the film’s depiction of the priesthood and found the complicated motivations of its central character, Cardinal Lawrence, played by Ralph Fiennes, “true” and “human.”

Lawrence is “ very idealistic and sort of ultra the good guy, but I think we’re never quite sure whether in the end he didn’t want (the papacy) himself or not,” McDermott said. “ It’s so unusual to see modern media take the time or understand the priesthood like that, let alone find an actor who’s able to perform it.”

Cummings cited “ the way a single speech can really capture the attention of the cardinals” at papal conclaves as “another thing that really rang true about the movie.” 

She pointed to the real-life Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio’s speech during the general congregations — the gatherings the cardinals hold before the chapel lock-in — in which the future Pope Francis evoked an image of Jesus knocking from the inside of the church to be let out. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s homily at Pope John Paul II’s funeral was also a key moment that led Ratzinger, becoming Pope Benedict XVI, to be elected.

If “Conclave” misses a critical procedural step, it’s the movie’s omission of the general congregations that take place in the two weeks or so between when the pope dies and the conclave begins. “ The informal contacts, the Roman dinners, the reception, the atmosphere in Rome. It’s very complex,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University.

But, he added, “It’s very hard to render in the movie.”

Overall, the film simplifies the politics and other factors at play in a conclave, as well as making the confrontations more blunt.

Faggioli said that the language in the film about the church going “forward” or “backward” is accessible to lay audiences but said the cardinals’ discussions tend to be more “coded” and “diplomatic.” They also consider more criteria in weighing the next pope, including geographic considerations. 

“ The progressive/conservative thing is much easier to present and for the audience to follow,” said Faggioli, “but the conclave is always a bunch of different issues on the agenda.”

Several experts observed that the cardinal characters caricature regional stereotypes rather broadly and don’t recognize the wide diversity that Francis has introduced into the college of cardinals. Only about half of the cardinal electors are from Europe or North America.

“ It’s ridiculous that the film focuses on Americans to the extent that it does,” said McDermott, noting that a contest with two North Americans in the running was unimaginable. McDermott noted that for the producers, however, that casting stars was likely higher on their list than verisimilitude.

The unusual entrance of Kabul, Afghanistan, Cardinal Benitez at the last minute was also more fiction than reality. While experts said that it was accurate that a cardinal arriving late to a conclave would be admitted, a cardinal “in pectore” — chosen secretly by the pope — would not have a cardinal’s rights or duties until he is named publicly.

Eagle-eyed RNS columnist the Rev. Thomas Reese caught several other inaccuracies, the most glaring being a violation of the seal of confession that is treated too lightly. But he also said the movie inaccurately showed the cardinals burning ballots after the first vote instead of the second vote of the conclave; cardinals wearing Mass vestments instead of choir robes as they enter the chapel; a reference to the College of Cardinals as “an order”; and the use of the title “Father” as cardinals address each other.

Overall, said Faggioli, “There are some movies that are more pious, but, I think, less faithful to the drama of Catholicism.”

Some Catholics on the right disagreed, expressing particular ire for the final twist of the movie. (Anyone wishing to be surprised should stop reading here.)

Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Bishop Robert Barron, who has lately used the platform from his popular media ministry Word on Fire to criticize pop culture, panned the movie’s depiction of the church, saying it “could have been written by the editorial board of the New York Times” and “checks every woke box.”

In the movie, Barron wrote on X, “The hierarchy of the Church is a hotbed of ambition, corruption and desperate egotism,” and “conservatives are xenophobic extremists and the liberals are self-important schemers.”

In criticizing the movie’s embrace of “diversity, inclusion” and “indifference to doctrine,” Barron also claims that the man who is ultimately chosen as pope is “a biological female.”

However Erika Lorshbough, the executive director of interACT, an advocacy organization for intersex youth, maintains this is something the movie gets right. Cardinal Benitez’s experience is consistent with Persistent Müllerian Duct Syndrome, where, in a fetus with XY chromosomes, the tubes that all fetuses have, which typically form ovaries and fallopian tubes in fetuses with XX chromosomes, do not regress.

Lorshbough noted that “some men with PMDS can have otherwise ‘typically male’ bodies and sexual development, as appears to be the case in ‘Conclave.’”

Lorshbough told RNS, “It is simply counterfactual and unscientific to describe such a person as ‘female’ on the basis of a bit of internal body tissue that developed differently than expected while in the womb,” adding that the suggestion that a person who is “in every measurable sense a man would be seen as ‘defective’ or not fit for the clergy because of a small difference in their physical development” was offensive.

Barron did not respond to request for comment about Lorshbough’s criticism.