In the Oscar-winning film Conclave, the complex political structure of the Catholic Church is laid out on the big screen as the College of Cardinals gather to elect a new pope. Based on a book of the same name by novelist Robert Harris, the plot of the film is fictional, but the papal election process, known as a conclave, is real.
According to Rev. Thomas Reese, a columnist at Religion News Service with a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, the film was mostly faithful to the truth.
"The voting procedure was done very well," Reese said: The urns used in the film were perfect replicas of what is actually used in the burning of the ballots.
He noted that one of the film's major inaccuracies was the treatment of Cardinal Vincent Benitez, played by Carlos Diehz, who was made a cardinal in pectore, a Latin phrase that translates to "in the heart" and refers to a process where appointments are made in secret. In reality, a cardinal appointed in pectore may not participate in a conclave unless his name was announced by the pope before he died, which was not the case in the film.
Reese is the author of multiple books on the Catholic Church, including Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church, which details the conclave process. The process itself, Reese explained, takes place in a no-external contact environment, with the cardinals — all under age 80 — isolated they reach a two-thirds majority consensus.
The cardinals are not completely alone. The Casa Santa Marta, in the film and in real life, is run by nuns who — as Isabella Rossellini's character, Sister Agnes says — are meant to be invisible, but have nevertheless been given eyes and ears.
In the film, Sister Agnes — who runs the Casa Santa Marta — comes to the aid of Sister Shanumi, a nun who had a secret relationship and child with one of the frontrunners for pope.
Caetlin Benson-Allott, director of film and media studies at Georgetown University, noted the interesting positioning of those two women characters.
"What I really liked about that is you see both sides, you see the possibility for the nuns to take a more active role, as Cardinal Bellini suggests that they should, and you also see the history of sexual abuse and also the exploitation of women in the Catholic Church," Benson-Allott said.
Copyright 2025 NPR