How new thriller Conclave is lifting the lid on the Pope’s election

Based on a bestselling novel by Robert Harris, the Oscar-tipped film imagines what goes on behind the scenes of the secretive process – complete with scheming, smearing and leaking.

As rival factions of cardinals manoeuvre to elect the next pope, the US Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) rejects a suggestion that he use stolen documents to smear a rival. His decision is not entirely on moral grounds. “I’d be the Richard Nixon of popes,” he says, in a scene that captures the savvy plot, the wit and the colourful characters in Conclave. The film takes us behind the scenes of the secretive, ritualised process that happens in the Vatican after a pope dies, but it plays like a bracing, contemporary political thriller. Edward Berger, whose All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) won the Oscar for best international film, directs with great precision and fidelity to real-life conclaves, capturing an essential conflict: this ancient ritual now lands in the media-flooded 21st Century.

That link between ancient and modern actually inspired Robert Harris’s bestselling 2016 novel of the same name, the basis for the film. Harris tells the BBC that the idea came to him in 2013 while, in the midst of finishing his Cicero Trilogy of novels set in ancient Rome, he was watching news of the election of Pope Francis. Harris says: “Just before the [new] Pope reveals himself on the balcony, the windows on either side fill up with the faces of the cardinal electors who’ve come to watch him. I looked at their faces, all elderly men, crafty, some very benign and holy, some looking quite cynical. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m looking at the Roman Senate.'” He observed that “an all-male ruling Senate had lived on, and these elderly men running everything was a direct link with the Roman Republic”. When he then started researching conclaves, he says, “I just thought it was absolutely riveting, politics in the raw.”

In his Oscar-tipped performance, Ralph Fiennes centres the film and adds sincere spiritual heft as the fair-minded English Cardinal Lawrence, tasked with running the conclave even though his confidence in his own vocation is wavering. The story begins with the death of the Pope, and the film-makers did extensive research to mirror the authentic details of a conclave. The cardinals arrive from around the world and live in austere rooms in a dormitory-like building, Casa Santa Marta. Once the conclave begins, they are sequestered, surrendering their phones and other devices, shut off from internet access or any news of the outside world, and being sworn to secrecy. Elaborately, they vote in the Sistine Chapel, writing the name of a would-be pope on a slip of paper, which is then put on a silver plate and deposited in an urn. Voting continues day after day until a pope is elected. All true, except that film’s Casa Santa Marta and Sistine Chapel were built in Rome’s Cinecitta Studios.

All the ornate trappings, accurate details and bright-red cardinals’ hats don’t get in the way of the political power struggles, which are equally realistic. Berger tells the BBC that the cardinals’ understandably human ambitions are similar to those in any institution. “The CEO is gone and people are going to come out fighting, they’re going to take out their knives and get that job, in Washington DC or in the Church in this case,” he says. “We think of this as an ancient spiritual ritual, and these men as sort of holy. We put them on this pedestal, and when you look closer, they’re going to have cell phones, they’re going to smoke, they have the same problems and vices and secrets as we do. The Pope ends up in a plastic body bag like all of us. And to me, that was important, to bring them into modernity.”

Harris says he “wanted to reflect the genuine divisions within the Church, which exist just as they exist within secular politics”. As in politics today, the fictional rivals break into stark liberal and conservative camps. Bellini, one of the frontrunners, is the liberal standard-bearer, open-minded toward issues including women’s roles in the Church. The other frontrunner is the Italian Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a conservative who longs to return to a Latin Mass. Other contenders include the enigmatic Canadian Tremblay (John Lithgow), Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), who hopes to become the first African Pope, and the little-known Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who was secretly appointed the Cardinal of Kabul (a post which, in fact, does not exist). Berger builds suspense as scheming, leaking of information and smearing goes on, with a taut style that brings to mind such political thrillers as All the President’s Men.

Outside the calm of the Sistine Chapel, Bellini says he doesn’t want the job even as his supporters wrangle votes for him in order to block Tedesco. That plot turn is not even a little far-fetched. Dan Wakin, who reported for the New York Times on the conclaves that elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 and the current Pope Francis in 2013, tells the BBC: “A cardinal who wants to become pope would do the exact opposite of tooting his own horn. That kind of exposed ambition is a deal-breaker.”

In a book-length interview published in April, Pope Francis himself revealed that in 2005 he was unknowingly supported as a candidate in an attempt to block the election of the conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict. And even when the cardinals are sequestered, the media casts a shadow. In the film, when one cardinal’s past is exposed within the conclave by a rival, Lawrence bluntly tells him, “You will never be Pope.” Alluding to the Church’s well-known real-life scandals concerning sexual abuse by priests, he says: “Nothing terrifies our curia more than the thought of more sexual scandals.”

In the 15th Century, Alexander VI, a Borgia, is alleged to have bribed his way into office. In the 16th Century, one conclave lasted 72 days, and when a frontrunner died it was rumoured that he had been poisoned. Back then, bankers in Rome took bets on who might win, creating a direct line from history to the circus-like atmosphere of today’s media world. In 2013, the BBC coverage said, “St Peter’s Square has become a kind of Coliseum. On every vantage point are the TV tents waiting for the games to begin.” The Guardian ran a Choose-Your-Own Pope feature.

Today, some of the manoeuvring plays out in public. Before the voting began in 2013, American cardinals were forced to stop giving news briefings, under pressure from other cardinals, while it was known that Italian cardinals continued to leak to the press. But in the film, much of the vote-whipping still happens behind the scenes, before and after the conclave officially starts.

Wakin says that during this period,”the cardinals often eat together and can drop hints about who they think would be the best candidate,” a reality that is a central element in the movie – although the fictional cardinals do much more than hint.

Although Berger agrees that Conclave is often driven by politics, he points out that there is “a deep sort of second layer that’s what the movie’s really about”, namely Lawrence’s inner turmoil. “He has a crisis of faith. He says, ‘As a cardinal I have difficulties with prayer.’ That’s as if I said, ‘I have difficulty trusting the images that my camera captures.’ It’s an existential crisis.” Berger says that the problem should be relatable to viewers in general. “It happens to be religion, but it could as well be inner confidence. That’s really what spoke to me and why I wanted to make the film,” he says.

Another low-key but crucial facet of Conclave is Isabella Rossellini’s role as Sister Agnes, who is in charge of the nuns brought in to cook, clean and generally serve the cardinals. They are meant to be quietly in the background, but as Agnes says in one plot-changing scene, “God has given us eyes and ears.” Berger says, “I always said to Isabella, when you’re in the scene, we really need to see you and see what you think and be with you. So she always had the close-up, she wasn’t just part of the scene.” He adds, “The patriarchal structure gets a crack through that theme.”

All these simmering elements, including Agnes’s role, lead to a shocking end that shouldn’t be spoiled. Harris says, “I didn’t just put in the end as a kind of amusing twist. It’s built into the very fabric of what the novel and the film are all about. He also got an endorsement from one of his background sources. “I was helped by – he died, sadly, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying – the English Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.” After he sent Murphy-O’Connor a copy of the book, Harris says, “To my surprise he wrote me a fan letter about it saying, ‘This is exactly what a conclave is like. Your central cardinal is exactly as we cardinals would wish to be. And as for the ending, I told myself it was only a novel.'”