‘Conclave’ Review – Hollywood Fantasizes About Roman Catholicism’s Push Toward Liberalism

The first thing to note when reviewing Conclave is the fact that Hollywood and the Roman Catholic Church share a fascinating relationship, but neither side seems interested in discussing it.

Despite Hollywood priding itself on being the antithesis of the biblical teachings of Jesus Christ, whenever a film, show, comic book, or video game needs to portray ‘Christians practicing their religion’, the industry almost always uses the visuals of the Catholic Church as shorthand for Christianity.

Whenever someone needs to exorcise a demonic spirit, they always call a Catholic priest. Practicing Christians are almost always shown, at some point, inside of a confessional booth of a Catholic Church.

At times historically, the two entities found themselves at the same table. 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.

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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 where 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. As 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, and one that could damage his credibility at that.

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, as 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 secular progressives hostile to their traditions.

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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, wherein a secret group of unelected leaders conspire behind the scenes to reshape and reform an institution to 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 fact 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 any 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, as they viewed the reveal that the new Pope can technically qualify as a ‘trans pope’ as yet another attempt by Hollywood to pervert Catholicism into being more LGBTQ-accepting. On the flip side, left-leaning audiences, including many Catholics (as, according to a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, roughly 44% of American Catholics consider themselves affiliated with the Democratic Party).

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, with its camera work, costume design, and contrasting color choices all standing 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.

Now, with that mention of the film’s scarlet-and-purple identity, it’s time to take a moment to address the Christian-Catholic elephant in the room.

As a Bible believing Christian, I wouldn’t be true to my faith if I didn’t note that while Conclave is a wonderfully shot project that is beautiful to look at, its use of the Catholic Church as window dressing raises some curious discussion points.

The film interestingly highlights just how the Catholic Church is separated from biblical truth. Some might be dismayed by veneration of mortal men and women (such as Mary), the political nature of its inner workings, and its use of the term ‘Holy Father’ to refer to both God and the Pope. Watching this film, you will get the impression the Church’s workings deviate from the words of the Bible, to say the least.

There’s also the film’s aforementioned use of scarlet and purple to depict the Church and its leaders, which is notable given how these two colors are specifically mentioned in Revelation 17 as being associated with one of the most influential figures in Biblical End Times, Babylon the Great.

A story about a secret election for a religion that adorns itself in purple and scarlet may be a reference too obtuse for many moviegoers to catch, but those who follow the Christian faith will likely see red lights flashing throughout the film’s entire runtime.

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 the progressivism. Conclave is a biblically illiterate film (about what I personally consider to be a biblically illiterate religion, at that).

(For readers interested in a more Christian-based break down of Conclave, I invite you to watch my upcoming-as-of-writing livestream – or its VOD depending on when you’re reading this – where I plan to do just that.)

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