The movie that mirrored Pope Francis' election—and what it reveals about the next conclave
"The Slum Pope has died. Long live the pope of the poor, the marginalised, the disenfranchised," the world cried.
Now that Pope Francis' funeral is done, the Vatican—one of the world’s oldest continually operating organisations—prepares for its most sacred act of political theatre: the papal conclave. Imagine House of Cards with cassocks, incense, and prayers for divine intervention.
Last year's film Conclave and the Robert Harris novel it was adapted from have turned this secret process into a thriller so gripping, even the frescoes above the Sistine Chapel might lean in to watch. As this real-life drama will unfold soon, this is a case of life imitating art imitating life. The film's serendipitous release last year will feed people's curiosity about the papal election, which will seed more people to watch the film.
I stumbled upon the film last year.
Fresh from Rome—where I'd jostled crowds to hear Pope Francis deliver his Sunday sermon (as I wrote in this column)—I watched Conclave. The film transformed the papal election into a chess match of cloaked ambition, with Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, a weary idealist navigating a minefield of egos.
I chuckled at the film's audacity: "Ah, Hollywood, you boldly go there for which Bollywood would be razed to the ground!" I thought. But after Francis' death, when the 2013 papal elections were written about again, the parallels between that conclave that elected Francis and the film's plot didn't just seem uncanny—they became a mirror held up by cinema, polished by divine wit.
Papal politics: Where God meets Game Theory
The papacy is the ultimate irony: a 2000-year-old institution commands 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide from the nation of Vatican City with a population less than the number of production houses in Mumbai. Yet it is a nation, and the pope its highest representative. Call it spiritual authority masquerading as geopolitical clout, but elections here involve a ritual more secretive than a NASA launch.
When a pope dies (or, in Benedict XVI's case, resigns), 120-odd cardinals under age 80 are locked cum clave (literally, "with a key") in the Sistine Chapel until they elect one of them and white smoke signals a successor. No tweets, no TikToks, just centuries of tradition, occasional existential crisis and as the film attests, intriguing drama.
But let's not romanticise. Though sworn to holiness, these men are as human as the rest of us. They feud, they strategise, they are ambitious and nurse grudges older than the Sistine Chapel itself. "The Holy Spirit guides the conclave… but He expects you to campaign," any Vatican insider will quip.
The 2013 election was no exception. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio—a Jesuit from Argentina who rode buses and cooked his own meals—arrived in Rome as a peripheral figure. The media spotlight fell on Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan and Cardinal Odilo Scherer of São Paulo. Bergoglio—a soft-spoken Jesuit with a reputation for austerity—was a "papabile" (pope-eligible) candidate largely overlooked by pundits. He was expected to vote and go home. Spoiler alert: he never did.
Conclave: The film that mirrored history
Enter Conclave, the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, adapted into a film last year. Its plot is a masterclass in suspense: cardinals deadlock between conservatives craving stability and progressives demanding reform. The dark horse? Archbishop Vincent Benitez of Kabul, a Filipino outsider who tends to refugees and shuns Vatican glamour. Sound familiar? Benitez's rise—propelled by humility and a blistering speech about the Church's mission to serve—is a near beat-for-beat Pope Francis' election story.
The overlaps left me breathless when I rewatched the film post-Francis' death. Both Bergoglio and Benitez are Jesuit reformers who wear their simplicity like an armour. Both emerge as compromises when factions fracture. Both give speeches that cut through the politicking like a knife.
In the film, Benitez declares in Spanish, "...we have shown ourselves to be small petty men.. concerned only with ourselves, Rome, elections, power... The Church is not tradition. The Church is not the past. The Church is what we do next." In 2013, Bergoglio warned, again in Spanish, "When the church does not emerge from itself to evangelize, it becomes self-referential and therefore becomes sick..."
The Ghosts of 2013: Scandal, resignation, and a Church in crisis
The film's fictional conclave unfolds amid scandals—financial corruption, abuse cover-ups—that mirror the real-life chaos of 2013. Benedict XVI's resignation had left the Church's reputation at a nadir. The Vatican Bank was embroiled in money-laundering allegations, abuse survivors demanded justice, and the bureaucracy moved at glacial speed. Catholics craved a pope who'd wield a broom, not a sceptre. Enter Bergoglio: the "slum cardinal" who had scrubbed floors in Buenos Aires' shantytowns.
Conclave’s Benitez is cut from the same cassock. When asked to bless the meal, he blesses "All those who cannot share this meal." He remembers, "The hungry, the thirsty, the sick, and the lonely," echoing Francis' sentiment, "the sisters who prepared this food for us." Like Francis, his election is a rebuke to complacency and corruption.
The Art of the (Divine) deal
Both elections show the strategic alliances and moral compromises that lead to a 'holy' coalition-building. In 2013, Bergoglio's allies—dubbed the "Gang of Eight"—included reformers like Honduras' Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga and Germany's Reinhard Marx. They framed him as the anti-Benedict: pastoral, accessible, allergic to pomp and a bridge between tradition and modernity. Similarly, in one of the early scenes in the film, eight reformers meet inside a theatre, and later Benitez wins over moderates by personifying what the Church could be, not what it has been.
The film also nails the conclave's quirks: the folded ballots, the oath of secrecy, and the fumata nera (black smoke) that signals failure. One scene shows burning votes with chemical additives to control smoke colour—a detail so niche that very few in the world know it.
Humility as Revolution
Another thing that unites Francis and the fictional Benitez is their quiet radicalism. Both reject the trappings of power: Francis ditched the papal apartments for a guest house, swapped red shoes for plain black, and told bishops to work amidst their flock so they can "smell like the sheep". Both Francis and Benitez seem to believe that the church isn't a museum; it's a field hospital.
Yet their humility is political dynamite. Bergoglio's 2005 conclave gesture—stepping aside to endorse Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI)—burnished his reputation as a team player. By 2013, that selflessness became his trump card. It is as if the more a candidate wants power, the less likely he is to get it, which also comes true in the book and the film.
The ending we need: A Church for the Broken
As I write this, the next conclave looms. Will it mirror Conclave's hopeful ending? The film closes with Benitez, now Pope Innocent, being elected despite being chromosomally a woman. He's a symbol of renewal—a man who'd rather hug a refugee than kiss a ring.
In 2013, Francis did just that. His first act as pope? Asking the people to pray for him, not to him. He washed the feet of prisoners, embraced the disfigured, and scolded clerics for acting like "peacocks." His reign wasn’t perfect—critics cite slow progress on abuse reforms—but he shifted the Vatican's gaze from its navel to the margins as he believed Jesus would.
The world today feels fractured by wars, inequality, and culture wars. Politics, once a tool for unity, seems only to exacerbate divisions. But could religion be the twist; what so often has been a wedge, might it just stitch us back together? Francis showed it's possible. The next pope could decide to carry on that legacy.
As the cardinals gather, I'm reminded of Benitez's fictional words: "The Church is what we do next." Maybe that's the lesson from both Conclave and Pope Francis: institutions don't change by magic. They change when ordinary people—cardinals or filmmakers or you or me—dare to imagine something better.
So let the next conclave begin. Let the debates rage, the alliances shift, the smoke rise. And may the winner be someone who knows that true power isn't in a throne, but in the dirt, the streets, and the quiet act of helping and healing.
After all, if a Jesuit from the slums can become pope, maybe miracles aren't just for the history books. Maybe they're what we do next.
