Conclave: a morality play with cool outfits

Very helpful infographic via Aleteia that came up when I was Googling about cardinals’ outfits

What first pulled me into the movie, Conclave, wasn’t the plot about ambitious cardinals vying to be pope but rather the pomp: the outfits and extremely specific protocol and rituals of life in the Vatican. The movie begins with the death of the current pope, and once they remove the dead pope’s body from his room, they seal it shut with this beautiful red ribbon and red wax stamp, and as I watched, I wondered to myself: Where do they source their ribbons? I wondered: Who first came up with these very specific procedures, how long have they been doing them, and, is there some kind of gigantic training manual for the newbies?

On our recent family vacation, I’d brought two books with me. One of them was Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert A. Johnson. (The other was Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence!) But Amelia, you’re thinking, Inner Work came out in 1989! How did you even come across it? Well, I first read Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams by the hosts of This Jungian Life, and in the back of the book, they suggest other books. This was one of them.

I’m glad that I picked it up, though, because while I really enjoyed Dream Wise, Inner Work’s approach to trying to understand your dreams is a bit more straightforward and it also emphasizes ritual, which the author defines as “symbolic behavior, consciously performed.” It’s not enough to interpret your dream, the author, Robert A. Johnson argues. You have to then do something physical with what you’ve learned. The Jungians, in my experience, are big on ritual and what I’ve heard some of them call the “religious function.”

In the paragraph just before this definition of ritual, Johnson, himself a Jungian analyst, writes:

All my experience as a psychologist leads me to the conclusion that a sense of reverence is necessary for psychological health.

I bring all of this up because one thing that secular, modern life doesn’t seem to care about, but religion does is exactly this: a sense of reverence. In Goldilocks terms, I think it’s fair to say that the Vatican has a wee bit too much reverence and ritual and your average, non-religious human in 2025, not enough.

This is where my head was at for the first twenty or so minutes of the film: thinking about religion, Jungian psychology, and how I’d like to visit the Vatican one day. At the same time, I’m also slowly being pulled into the actual story, the plot.

Our main character is Cardinal Lawrence, played by a personal favorite of mine (everyone’s?), Ralph Fiennes.

Fiennes in A Bigger Splash v. Fiennes in Conclave

He’s dean of the College of Cardinals, and this position makes him the one who is essentially “manager” of the conclave—the conclave being the process where all the cardinals convene and vote for a new pope. We learn pretty early on that Cardinal Lawrence doesn’t want this responsibility nor does he want to be pope. In fact, we learn that he tried to quit his position as dean but was denied his request by the late pontiff. This makes Cardinal Lawrence what feels to me like a well-worn archetype: the leader who doesn’t want to lead but(!) it’s this very reluctance which makes him the perfect candidate for the job. Like Frodo Baggins. Or that one, quiet parent who doesn’t even want to join the PTA (but who would obviously make the best president).

What’s fun about Conclave is that our antagonists are also men of the cloth, a.k.a. cardinals. (Alt title: Cardinals Behaving Badly.) One of the bad ones, Cardinal Tedesco, is seen puffing on his vape pen, while another bad one, Cardinal Tremblay, seems semi-invigorated by the pope’s passing. Tremblay, I think it’s important to note, is portrayed by John Lithgow, whom my husband described to a friend via text as “the dad in Harry and the Hendersons, but in like a totally different role.”

For the sake of brevity (and enjoyment) what you need to know is that identity politics are alive and well in the Vatican. And of the initial front runners, Cardinal Vape Pen is far too racist to be pope. And Cardinal Tremblay is far too eager. The other cardinal getting votes is Cardinal Adeyemi who is Nigerian but too “conservative” a.k.a. homophobic. This leaves us as viewers kind of, sort of rooting for the “progressive”, Cardinal Stanley Tucci, who comes off as less racist, less homophobic, and who, bonus, seems to consider women to be three-dimensional people. Cardinal Lawrence himself gets a smattering of votes as well as this other very outsider-y cardinal, Cardinal Benitez.

Much mystery surrounds this latter cardinal, who arrived at the Vatican at the very last minute–before they’re all sequestered. None of the cardinals knew about him, and we learn that he was appointed by the pope in secret(!). He speaks Spanish but is stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan. He makes a good first impression though, because when Ralph Fiennes/ Lawrence asks him to bless the food, he does so with an acknowledgement of the women (the nuns) who made the food. It’s one of those small-but-big movie moments. Ah, so this outsider (read: foreigner) cardinal also recognizes women and even the importance of “women’s work.”

But none of this is what gave me feelingzz.

Apart from the outfits, what I most cared about in Conclave was watching Cardinal Lawrence wrestle with his unwanted responsibility. He just wants to knock out this conclave and move on. He certainly doesn’t want to make the process even harder by having to consider that some of his colleagues have been bribing other colleagues and sabotaging other front runner candidates. It’s one thing to have your own personal doubts about your profession, but it’s entirely another to become a corporate whistleblower, to have to stand up in front of all the people you work with and assert uncomfortable truths no one wants to hear.

So of course Cardinal Lawrence is conflicted. Part of him really doesn’t want to cause a scene. This world of the Vatican is so ordered and tidy. There’s no protocol for causing a scene and no guarantee that it won’t end up very badly for him. But to not say anything, to not do anything would lead to self-estrangement. And you can’t live like that either. Or, of course you can, but it’s a kind of torture. No, Cardinal Lawrence knows what he has to do. He has to name names!

Probably my favorite moment of the movie is when he confronts the dad from Harry and the Henderson’s Cardinal Tremblay. And Cardinal Tremblay attempts to gaslight him as he did in an earlier scene. Tremblay says: “I shall pretend this conversation never took place.” And then he walks off.

Cardinal Lawrence is visibly shaken. Anyone who has ever been gaslit knows this feeling. When someone refuses to accept their wrongdoing, they place it back on you. And it’s so easy to absorb it. To think to yourself: Wow, I am really, really bad. I should have been quiet. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s so difficult to hold on to self-belief.

And I think you see this all flash before Cardinal Lawrence. After Tremblay walks away, Lawrence just stands there for a long second. And then he says to basically no one but himself. “But it has taken place!”

What I hear in that statement from Lawrence is a reaffirmation of his own existence. What I hear in that moment is his own trust in himself, which has been thoroughly beaten down but not completely destroyed.

In the next scenes, we watch as Cardinal Lawrence boldly moves forward. He has evidence of Tremblay’s bribes and he makes copies. It’s a classic Hollywood montage moment.

But we’re only three-quarters into the film at this point. Pope candidates are being eliminated left and right (Tremblay and Adeyemi—via Tremblay’s machinations) but still, no one has emerged as a favorite. Lawrence begins to think that maybe he is the best man for the job. But, just as they are about to cast another round of votes, the Vatican is attacked. A window is blown open. Lawrence falls to the ground.

In the next scene, we see a dust-covered and minorly-injured Lawrence receive a piece of paper that explains exactly what happened. And then, we watch as he reads from this piece of paper informing the group of cardinals that a car bomb went off in a plaza and then as people fled, a suicide bomber detonated another explosion. He doesn’t mention religion at all.

But Cardinal Vape Pen (the racist) stands up and immediately makes it political. Essentially calls for a war on Islam. Cardinal Stanley Tucci does the very liberal thing of calling him out for his racism. “You should be ashamed!” he shouts with a pointed finger. It’s no surprise then that the scene loses all cohesion, becoming like any heated political disagreement in our exact moment. Your side is bad! No, your side is bad! Everyone is unhappy, murmuring and tsk-tsk-ing at one another until we hear a quiet but firm voice attempting to gain the attention of the crowd. This voice is revealed to be that of Cardinal Benitez—the Spanish-speaking, Afghanistan-stationed, mystery cardinal. It’s important to note that since we first met Cardinal Benitez—he was the one none of the other cardinals knew existed as he was appointed by the late pope in secret—we have gotten to know him a tiny bit via conversations with Cardinal Lawrence, during which he’s come off as the opposite of the other bad, ambitious cardinals. In reality-TV speak, he seems to be in it for the right reasons.

And since he is stationed in Afghanistan, he can speak to having witnessed the tragedies of war enacted in the name of religion, which is exactly what he does. He gives a speech that I believe is intended by the filmmaker to rise above the fray of politics. He effectively calls for compassion and calls out all of the cardinals (he includes himself by using the pronoun we) for behaving selfishly. All of us have been bad, he (basically) says.

In the world of the film, the speech seems to… work. It doesn’t simply hush the in-fighting, but it also works to solve the problem of who should be pope. It’s seemingly and suddenly clear after that.

The movie bounds to its conclusion: there’s another round of votes and Cardinal Benitez is elected as supreme pontiff. When Lawrence asks him what he wants his pope name to be (Choosing one’s pope name is another thread of the movie. For example we learn Lawrence would go with… wait for it… “John!”), Benitez chooses “Innocent.”

Alas, Benitez’s speech didn’t work for me. At least not in the way I think the filmmaker wanted it to. What it did do was make me become keenly aware of what felt like the movie’s moral scaffolding. It made me exit this highly-stylized screen world and think about the real world and the state of identity politics. I’m pretty sure I said the word, “Ugh” aloud.

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I think it’s only natural while watching a film that centers religion and voting to bring to the experience all of your personal religious and electoral baggage. For me, this meant bringing my Christian upbringing, my understanding of why I abandoned the faith, my previous allegiance to identity politics and my understanding of why I abandoned that faith.

During Benitez’s speech, I got clear and present Jesus vibes; that a conscious parallel was being made. This was Benitez’s sermon on the mount. At the same time, with his brown skin, Mexican heritage, and ties to Afghanistan, I felt the strong pull of identity politics, a brand of politics that in my opinion overemphasizes one’s exterior traits, what one looks like, talks like, and often overlooks traits that should matter just as much but are quite difficult to discern like whether or not one is, for example, living with integrity.

Even if you don’t believe he was the son of God, there’s something unimpeachable about Jesus and his story. Born to a virgin, he cared for the poor; he hung out with prostitutes. Wasn’t big on violence. And partially due to his demeanor but also partially because of his Jesus-vibes, Cardinal Benitez, also seems shrouded in this blanket of unimpeachability.

Though what do I really know about him apart from his exterior traits? Don’t get me wrong, he seems like a really solid guy. Remember, he blessed the food and the hands of those who made it. He says that he voted for Cardinal Lawrence! And his speech is… nice. He doesn’t stand up and shout “Shame on you!” like Stanley Tucci does. No. I mean, that is the gist of his speech, he just uses different words, and he says it all calmly. He says it with total control of his emotions.

But this—this must be what really irked me. Because this was the brand of Christianity I grew up with. Sermons and no emotional outbursts. No big feelings at all really, unless the big feelings were love and kindness. But even those were mostly bottled up. Definitely restrained. I always think of Anne Lamotte quoting her dad’s line about Presbyterians (which was my family’s denomination): “God’s frozen people,” he called them.

As a teenager, to be Christian for me became synonymous with being good. Appearing good. And to practice Christianity became about behavior modification and vigilance. To practice Christianity became this very right-brained, rational pursuit, of which my emotions mostly need not apply.

And though it had been explained to me countless times, I never could understand why Jesus had to die for me. It was, as my parents repeated often, so that I might have eternal life. Perhaps you see where this is going. Because as much as I wanted to be good, I did have outbursts. I did have big feelings. One of them was confusion. In other words, I spent my high school years and half of college much like Cardinal Lawrence spends the majority of Conclave: internally conflicted.

But whereas Lawrence is able to find peace through Cardinal Benitez, this brown-skinned, non-Islamophobic Jesus-figure, young-me took a different route. I slowly disentangled myself from Christianity, which eventually led to less behavior modification, which eventually led to much less inner conflict.

It’s truly only recently, two decades later and through my interest in Jungian psychology, which emphasizes the power of myth, that I’ve finally found a way into connecting to Jesus’s story. The Jungian analyst James Hollis helped me get there:

To me the most compelling part [of the Jesus story] is not the resurrection, which may or may not have happened, or the compassion that Christ manifested, which I can believe. Rather I have always been moved by his dark night in the Garden of Gethsemane where he was so deeply divided. To go down into that city was to die a death of horror and ignominy. To flee to the desert was surely more attractive. Who among us would not take the opportunity to flee, and who would not then suffer in the desert, in that terrible freedom which took us away from our vocation? Either way brings terrible suffering. One is a suffering that authenticates one’s values; one is the suffering that comes from living inauthentically.

Now that’s relatable. Being so conflicted and yet having to choose. Now, that’s compelling. Now that’s a leader I want to follow.

Or put another way, via the beginning of the poem “Self Portrait” by David Whyte:

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God / or many gods. / I want to know if you belong or feel / abandoned. / If you can know despair or can see it in others.

Or even more succinctly: I don’t care how good you appear. Show me your insides!

And in the world of Conclave, it’s Cardinal Lawrence’s insides we see. Not Benitez’s. With what we know about Benitez and certainly with what is revealed about him at the very end of the film (spoiler: it involves more identity politics), I’m guessing that he has had his own dark night of the soul. But as viewers, we’re not privy to it. And therefore, alas, while I can appreciate him, I can’t quite connect to him. Not enough to follow. And not enough to vote for.