While Pope Francis battles pneumonia in a Rome hospital, a curious juxtaposition has emerged: the Academy Awards buzz around the film Conclave.
The Vatican traditionally avoids discussing papal succession while the current pontiff is ill, yet the film’s success has thrust the intricacies of a conclave into the spotlight.
Conclave depicts the election of a new pope, exploring the rituals and challenges facing the modern Catholic Church. The film has garnered critical acclaim, even receiving positive reviews from Vatican publications such as L’Osservatore Romano and Avvenire.
This presents a unique challenge for the Catholic hierarchy, balancing prayers for Pope Francis’s recovery with the film’s exploration of a sensitive topic.
Granted, those reviews were published before Francis entered the hospital on 14 February with a complex lung infection that has taken him out of commission for the longest time of his 12-year papacy.
It’s unclear if the newspapers would have published them after Francis’ health took such a dire turn. That’s even more the case since it’s clear from the opening scenes in the Vatican’s modern Santa Marta hotel where Francis lives that Conclave’s fictional dead pope is modelled after the real-life current one.
But at the very least, the life-imitating-art coincidence of Conclave the movie finding mass popular appeal at a time when the world’s media has descended on Rome to monitor Francis’ health has certainly piqued interest in what might happen in a real-life conclave.
Author Harris knows it’s a sensitive time
Conclave director Edward Berger’s adaptation of the Robert Harris novel starring Ralph Fiennes as the dean of the College of Cardinals, has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It goes into Sunday’s Oscars with a Bafta win for best picture and a SAG award for best ensemble.
Harris is well aware of the sensitivity of the moment, and how the surreal turn of events of an ailing pope dovetailing with an Oscar campaign had made his book and the film relevant to say the least. But he is adamant against trying to milk the moment for publicity.
“I’ve been refusing all requests to talk about it and a future conclave because I think that’s in extreme bad taste,” Harris said. “I really hope he’s got some more years yet.”
Francis suffered a setback on Friday, after he inhaled vomit during a coughing fit and required non-invasive mechanical ventilation to breathe. Doctors said they need 24 to 48 hours to evaluate how and if the isolated episode affected his overall clinical condition, while keeping his prognosis guarded.
All of which has made Conclave the film a bit too close for comfort in more ways than one for anyone following Francis’ plight and concerned about what it means for the Catholic Church.
Mild spoiler alert
To recap: The film opens with the death of the pope and turns around the political manoeuvring and manipulations behind the election of his successor. Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes) is dean of the College of Cardinals, who must organise the conclave amid his own crisis of faith.
With the future of the church weighing on him, he has to contend with secrets, scandals, smear campaigns and surprising twists, while ensuring the election’s integrity.
Massimo Faggioli, theologian at Villanova University, said the film was “sadly effective” in illustrating the institutional instability that the Catholic Church is going through now, as well as the ease with which a single act or allegation of misconduct can ruin someone.
“The main threats (are) now coming not from the outside (Napoleon, or Hitler, or secularisation), but from the inside (especially the fear of another sexual scandal),” he said.
For sure Berger takes some creative liberties. Cardinal Lawrence, for example, would have been excommunicated two or possibly three times for his efforts to navigate the intrigue, given the ban on communications with the outside world during a conclave and canon laws governing the seal of the confessional and the sealing of the papal apartments after a pope has died.
But this is Hollywood, and His Eminence can be forgiven.
Catholic media loved the film
Avvenire, which hews to the Vatican establishment line, praised the film for its sumptuous beauty, twists of plot and “anything but trivial” commentary about the current state of the church.
“Let’s face it: Conclave, which takes us to the heart of one of the world’s most mysterious and secret events, is a highly entertaining film, especially for an American audience that isn’t terribly picky,” Avvenire said on 20 December, when the film opened in Italian theatres and well before Francis got sick.
Writing in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on 1 February, critic Alessandra Comazzi highlighted the short but critical turn played by Isabella Rossellini, as Sister Agnes.
As a longtime critic for the La Stampa daily, Comazzi is well aware of the Vatican taboo of openly talking of a conclave. But in an interview, she said the film managed to treat a conclave as thriller without causing offence. She said the Vatican newspaper was only too happy to publish her rave.
“The dean Lawrence has to govern the conclave and liberate it from these false prophets,” she said. “And I think also from the ecclesial and religious point of view, the director managed to do it in a very respectful way.”
But a cardinal close to Francis didn’t
That said, someone who has actually participated in a conclave gave the film something of a thumbs down.
“My experience of being in at least one conclave was not that it was some sort of scene of political backroom plotting of how to get your candidate elected,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the retired archbishop of Boston, wrote in a 7 February blog post.
O’Malley voted in the 2013 conclave that elected Francis pope and is one of his closest allies. He said he and his brother cardinals were well aware that millions of Catholics were praying from afar “so that the Holy Spirit would guide us in our deliberations.”
“And, of course, at the moment when each cardinal votes, you take your ballot, stand in front of Michelangelo’s image of Christ in the ‘Last Judgment’ and swear before God that you are going to vote for the person that you believe is God’s will for the church,” he wrote.
“It’s a much different experience than what they depicted in the movie,” he wrote. “For all its artistic and entertainment value, I don’t think the movie is a good portrayal of the spiritual reality of what a conclave is.”
