How Accurate Was Conclave Compared to a Real Search for a New Pope?
As a new Papal election looms, movie-goers are turning to Conclave again. But how accurate is the film?
Pope Francis, the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, passed away on Easter Monday at the age of 88, setting in motion a complex web of ritual, mourning, and strict procedures to not just commemorate his life, but to choose the next Pope.
In the Roman Catholic faith, the Pope is part of an Apostolic Succession line that stretches all the way back to St. Peter, who was himself said to have been appointed to lead the church by Jesus Christ. So if you're Catholic, you know that choosing a new Pope is a huge deal, and a sacred one at that. But even if you're not a Catholic, you probably know that the process for choosing that new Pope is a longstanding, secretive piece of Vatican statecraft known as a conclave, which was the center of Focus Features' 2024 movie, Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes,
RELATED: What's a Papal Conclave?
But how accurate is Edward Berger's Oscar-winning film, adapted from Robert Harris' novel of the same name? Let's take a closer look at Conclave, its depiction of the title process, and what experts say about its factual components.
What is the movie Conclave about?
First, for those of you who might not have caught the film last year, a little tease of what Conclave depicts: After the death of the Pope, the College of Cardinals gathers in Vatican City for the title event, the secretive Papal election called each time a Supreme Pontiff dies or resigns. At the center of this particular election is Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes), the current Dean of the College of Cardinals, who's responsible for overseeing the conclave and, in his own way, hopefully steering the election toward the more liberal Cardinals in contention.
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As the conclave gets underway, we get to know the candidates, from the liberal Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) to the moderate and ambitious Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) to the staunch traditionalist Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto). With the future of the Church on the line, the Cardinals begin the conclave, each casting anonymous ballots in several voting rounds broken up by prayer, conversation, and shifting alliances. They need a two-thirds majority to choose the next Pope, but just when it starts to look like certain candidates are gaining momentum, Lawrence discovers secrets that could shift the entire election, and the fate of the Church, forever.
How accurate is the movie Conclave compared to a real Papal conclave?
Berger and his production team went to great lengths to recreate key elements of the Vatican and of the Papal conclave, building a massive replica of the Sistine Chapel where ballots are counted, and of course crafting elaborate costumes and props that are true to the real wardrobes of Cardinals. It all looks and feels quite real, but is it? How accurate is Conclave, anyway?
The short answer is that Conclave is, despite a few instances of creative license like Cardinals speaking English when they might otherwise speak Latin, a pretty accurate portrayal of a Papal conclave, with one key caveat: We simply do not know exactly what goes on at Papal conclaves, and that's just the way the Vatican likes it.
We know certain key things, of course. We know that the Cardinals are sequestered in the chapel, and in apartments at the Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican. We know that their ballots are secret, written on folded of pieces of paper and then placed on a single thread. We know that the ballots are ceremonially burned after each round of voting, and black smoke is released to indicate a Pope has not yet been chosen, while white smoke indicates a successful Papal election. And we know that secrecy is key to everything about the conclave, from sweeping for electronic devices to asking Cardinals to take a vow that they will not share what went on behind close doors. And Conclave depicts all that.
RELATED: Everything to Know About Conclave, the Papal Thriller Starring Ralph Fiennes
“It gets a lot of the details right,” Bill Cavanaugh, a professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, toldThe Guardian about the film. “Certainly the mise-en-scene of the movie, they take pains to be very accurate on that.”
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Berger and his team explained that they did not go to The Vatican for help on making Conclave, but they did interview various Cardinals who've been a part of Papal elections before, which leads us to the murkier parts of the accuracy discussion. Because they've taken vows of secrecy, the Cardinals cannot divulge any information about specific things that happened at a specific conclave, for example what conversations they had with other Cardinals while determining their votes. They can, however, talk about the general procedures of a conclave, from breaking the departed Pope's ring to sealing off the Papal apartments to how the balloting process works.
With all that in mind, Conclave is not a documentary-level depiction of what really happens in a Papal election, because we simply don't know everything that goes on when the doors to the Sistine Chapel are closed, and no one alive really wants to tell us everything. With that caveat in mind, though, the film is a very solid approximation of a real conclave, and it's steeped in beautifully realized bits of Vatican pageantry that provide a window into the basics of how a real search for the next conclave could play out.
Conclave is now available from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.
