‘Conclave’ Review – Hollywood Fantasizes About The Catholic Church’s Push Toward Liberalism

Despite Hollywood priding itself on being the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus Christ, the industry almost always loves using the visuals of the Catholic Church. Whenever someone needs to exorcise a demonic spirit, they always call a Catholic priest. A myriad of movies show, at some point, someone inside a confessional booth of a Catholic Church, etc.

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At times, the two entities found themselves at the same table. Case in point, the industry’s previous self-censorship guideline, The Hays Code, was the result of Hollywood trying to clean up its reputation, which meant making nice with the Church and middle America.

Enter a little film called Conclave, which currently has a lot of buzz surrounding it in Hollywood – so much so that some are calling it an early favorite to dominate the upcoming and right-around-the-corner award season.

It takes place at a time when the Pope has just died of a heart attack, and as a result, a Papal conclave, hence the title, is called and the College of Cardinals gather together for the monumental task of electing the new head of the Church.

The election eventually narrows down to four viable candidates: Cardinal Bellini, who is trying to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps and reform Rome to a more liberal view; Cardinal Adeyemi, who looks to be the first black Pope in the history of the Papacy; Cardinal Tremblay, a conservative member of the Church from Canada and the odds-on-favorite, and Cardinal Tedesco, a traditionalist who wants to abandon parts of the Second Vatican Council, including the rule of peaceful coexistence with other religions such as Islam (Nostra Aetate). 

The secluded Cardinals spend the next several days deliberating who should be the next head of the Church. However, a scandal behind the scenes threatens the legitimacy of the Papacy. It turns out the previous Pope may have been directly involved in sabotaging several candidates who he deemed unfit for office.

Secrets and lies are exposed over the next couple of days, and as a result, an unlikely candidate from Kabul finds himself the dark horse candidate for the Pope’s seat, but he is not without his own secret, one that could damage his credibility. At face value, Conclave is about the behind-closed-doors political struggle of the Vatican and their search for the next man to be deemed worthy of the title of Holy Father.

However, there’s a lot more here than meets the eye. Viewing this film through the eyes of liberal Hollywood, it’s clearly a critique of the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, with the liberal movement inside its organization being framed as the heroes and the conservative-minded Cardinals, who want to remain faithful to the traditions of Rome, as the villains.

Liberal audiences obviously view this film as a takedown of the ‘narrow-minded views’ of Catholicism, while the more conservative side – particularly Catholics – see it as a fundamental attack on their religion from hostile secular progressives.

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The essence of Conclave can be best described as secrecy and discord, as the two sides of the Catholic church are at war with one another over how they believe the religious institution should be run. Ultimately, the film’s depiction of the problems in the Vatican draws a parallel to the real problems of the current American government.

That is to say, a secret group of unelected leaders conspires behind the scenes to reshape and reform an institution according to a more progressive image while parading themselves as heroes for doing so. And no moment in Conclave stands as a better example of this than the film’s twist ending.

[SPOILER WARNING: Significant spoilers for Conclave follow below. If you’d like to avoid them, please refrain from reading further.]

At the end of the film, after several Popes are exposed for internal corruption, the Council of Cardinals chooses to go with an unknown Cardinal, based on one speech he made towards the end of the film, as the next leader of the church. But following their vote, the Council finds out that the Pope they just elected is intersex, and as such possesses both male and female genitalia.

Some Catholic leaders were furious by this revelation. They viewed the reveal that the new Pope can technically qualify as a ‘trans pope’ in yet another attempt by Hollywood to pervert Catholicism into being more LGBTQ-accepting. 

In an election year, this movie highlights the problem of liberal perversion and requires the audience to be ignorant of Christian truth to sell its story. Although, as a cinematic production, Conclave does have its positives.

Thanks to the visual directing of Edward Burger and the cinematography of Stéphane Fontaine, the film is easily one of the most beautifully shot across all of 2024. Its camera work, costume design, and contrasting color choices all stand as pinnacle examples of each respective art.

In particular, audiences will marvel at the film’s use of the colors purple and scarlet in visually depicting the Catholic Church. As such, Conclave will likely receive multiple nominations throughout the 2025 award season.

From an objective standpoint, Conclave is a wonderfully shot film that is beautiful to look at. However, from a religious standpoint, its narrative highlights many of the issues not just facing the Catholic Church, such as the organization’s very real turn towards progressivism.

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