Conclave 2024 is a political thriller I think mostly based on the life and struggle of a conscious cardinal, Thomas Lawrence, who always tried to unify the divisions and uphold the concerns of Catholic organizational order in electing the new Pope after the death of the incumbent Pope of a heart-attack.
The film reminds me of A Man For All Seasons, which portrays the life of another conscientious man, Sir Thomas Moor, a 16th-century English statesman, lawyer, and theologian who refused to support the most notorious King Henry VIII’s decision to divorce his wife, marriage to his second wife Anne Boleyn and break from the Roman Catholic Church.
Based on the novel by the British novelist Robert Harris, and directed by Edward Berger, Conclave 2024 was released on 30th August and was named one of the top 10 films by the American Film Institute.
As of January 15, Conclave 2024 has grossed $31.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $44.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $76.4 million. It has 93% of 290 critics’ reviews are positive on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.1/10, Metacritic scores it 79 out of 100.
Watching Conclave left me ponder on the perspective of the role of gender in the Church, especially that of Catholicism, the issue of sexuality and the view of tolerance of Christianity.
Conclave 2024 Synopsis
There are moments in history when the sacred and the political become indistinguishable when the whispers of divine calling are drowned beneath the weight of human ambition. Conclave 2024 is a meditation on power, faith, and the unbearable burden of leadership of the Papacy, set against the backdrop of one of the most secretive and consequential gatherings in the world—the election of a new Pope.
It begins with the death of the Supreme Pontiff, a moment both solemn and seismic. The Holy See is left vacant, and in its absence, the corridors of the Vatican echo with uncertainty. Within the walls of this ancient institution, centuries of tradition dictate that the College of Cardinals must now retreat from the world and, through prayer and deliberation, divine the will of God.
But as they step into the Sistine Chapel, the weight of their own mortal concerns presses heavily upon them, to elect the next eligible Pope.
At the heart of the film is Dean Lawrence (played by Ralph Fieness), a man who sustains reluctance to a pope due to his weakness in prayer and was concerned with the welfare of the Conclave and the serving God, and burdened not only with the duty of overseeing the conclave but with an inner turmoil that gnaws at the very foundation of his faith.
He is a reluctant administrator, a man of quiet conscience rather than political maneuvering. Yet, at this moment, he finds himself at the center of a chessboard where every move is fraught with consequences.
Among the candidates for the papacy, two figures emerge as oppositional forces. On one side, Cardinal Tedesco (played by Sergio Casttelitto)—a staunch traditionalist who yearns to restore the Church to its former rigidity, to reassert its dogma in an age of spiritual ambiguity.
On the other, Cardinal Bellini—a, liberal, progressive, a voice of change, a man who believes the Church must open itself to the fractures, such as gay and divorce, of the modern world rather than retreat from them. These men do not merely represent differing theological perspectives; they are emblems of the war for the soul of the Church itself.
Yet, amidst the murmurs of diplomacy and doctrine, a shadow looms. A whispered revelation—unspoken truths about the deceased Pope and a hidden appointment of an unexpected figure —threatens to unravel the very sanctity of the election.
The unexpected figure, Vincent Benitez, the Archbishop of Kabul, arrives, throwing the conclave into deeper uncertainty at the last moment of the election began. His presence is a revelation, an act of faith by the late Pope that was kept hidden until now. But why? And to what end?
Before the election, Dean Thomas Lawrence gave a sermon and says that, “Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. My God, My God, why are you forsaken me? He cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty… and no doubt…there would be no mystery…and therefore no need… for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness, and who carries on.”
Not very many liked the sermon.
As the doors of the Sistine Chapel are sealed, the weight of secrecy and ambition presses upon the cardinals. Loyalties are tested. Convictions waver. In the candlelit halls of history, the choice of one man will determine the future of a billion souls.
As the ballots are cast, tensions simmer beneath the surface. The lines between loyalty and betrayal blur. Promises are whispered in dimly lit corridors; alliances shift like sand in the wind. Some cardinals see the conclave as a test of faith; others see it as a game of strategy, where power is not granted by God alone but secured through persuasion, pressure, and, when necessary, deception.
The First vote revealed 5 possible candidates with the results of votes for Joshua Adeyemi (the believer of homosexuality and an African), 21, Tedesco 18, Aldo Bellini 17, Tremblay 16, Thomas Lawrence 5 and others 31 votes.
But as none of the candidates was able to secure a majority of the necessary 72 votes the first vote saw no winner.
The second vote gave Adeyemi 34, Tedesco 25, Bellini 18, Tremblay 17, Lawrence 9 and Benitez 2 votes.
However, in the Third vote, Adeyemi secured 52 votes to become the first African Pope in the history of the Church, followed by Tedesco 42, Bellini 9, Tremblay 10, Lawrence 5, and Benitez 4 votes.
Nevertheless, a 30-year-old sexual scandal involving Adeyemi and Sister Shanumi came to Lawrence’s discovery. As the rumour spreads, Lawrence asks Adeyemi to resign from the race.
On the 5th vote, Tremblay 40 has the lead, followed by Tedesco, Bellini, Lawrence, Adeyemi and Benitez with 34, 13, 11, 9, and 6 votes respectively.
The allegation of destroying the reputation of Cardinal Adeyemi by bringing Sister Shanumi in the Church against Tremblay surfaces.
Meanwhile, the specter of Cardinal Tremblay looms—a man whose political acumen and carefully constructed image hide a darker truth. The revelation that the late Pope had dismissed him for misconduct threatens to upend the entire conclave. Did the Holy Father know something that the others do not? Or is this a manufactured smear, designed to tilt the election in favor of another? And if Tremblay were to win despite these allegations, what would that mean for the future of the Church?
As Sister Anges revealed the information about Cardinal Tremblay’s involvement in the allegation, Dean asks him to resign from his candidacy. He comes to find that Tremblay was dismissed from all his posts by the Holy Father because he discovered Adeyemi’s surrender to temptation 30 years ago and that he arranged for the woman involved to be brought to Rome, with the express intention of destroying Adeyemi’s chances of becoming Pope.
Dean Lawrence discovered in the late Pope’s apartment documents on the activity of Cardinal Tremblay, he was guilty of simony, the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges, for example pardons or benefices. But fearing the worse, Bellini advised Lawrence to have Tremblay as Pope instead of his allegation fearing it would destroy the reputation of the Church.
Later, Dean Lawrence had the document of financial allegation, involving Tremblay, xeroxed and distributed to all the voters. At the resultant heat of the argument among the cardinals, Sister Agnes interferes and confirms that Sister Shanumi was brought to Rome in order to destroy the reputation of Cardinal Adeyemi.
Cardinal Lawrence, the reluctant overseer of this sacred ritual, becomes increasingly tormented by the undercurrents of intrigue swirling around him.
He is a man who never sought power, yet power has been thrust upon him. His crisis of faith deepens as he begins to question not only the sanctity of the process but the very institution, he has devoted his life to. If even the highest echelons of the Church are driven by personal ambition, where does that leave the concept of divine will?
Then there is Cardinal Bellini, the reformer. He stands at the precipice of history, his vision for a more open, more tolerant Church resonating with those who yearn for change. Yet, even as support gathers around him, doubt gnaws at his heart. Can one man truly reform an institution as vast and ancient as the Catholic Church? Or will he, like so many before him, be swallowed by its machinery?
Now that Adeyemi, Billini and Tremblay are far removed from the contest, the race is now in between Lawrence and Tedesco. But there was a bombing during the voting.
The conservative candidate Tedesco thinks the bobbling was carried out by Islamic Terrorists which he fiercely condemned and says, “A relativism that sees all faiths and passing fancies accorded equal weight. So that now, when we look around us, we see the homeland of the Holy Roman Catholic Church dotted with the mosques and minarets of the prophet Muhammad! We tolerate Islam in our land, but they revile us in theirs. We nourish them in our homelands. But they exterminate us”, expecting a pope who would fight the terrorism with war.
Retorting Tedesco’s view, Cardinal Benitez argues “I carried out my ministry in the Congo. In Baghdad, in Kabul. I’ve seen the lines of the dead and wondered, Christian and Muslim. Would you say we have to fight? What is it you think we’re fighting? Do you think it’s those deluded men who had carried out these terrible acts today? No, my brother. The thing you’re fighting is here… inside each and every one of us, if we give in to hate now, if we speak of “sides” instead of speaking for every man and woman. This is my first time here, amongst you, and I suppose it will be my last.“
“Forgive me, but these last few days we have shown ourselves to be small petty men, we have seemed concerned only with ourselves, with Rome, with these elections, and with power. But things are not the Church. The Church is not tradition. The Church is not the past. The Church is what we do next.”
And through it all, the presence of Cardinal Benitez—the hidden cardinal, the ghost in the room—remains an enigma. The late Pope’s final, secret appointment raises profound questions. Was he meant to be the heir to St. Peter’s throne? Was his role meant to disrupt the established order? Or is he merely an outsider, thrown into a storm not of his own making?
As the conclave nears its climax, the struggle for the soul of the Church intensifies. The votes are counted. The black smoke rises. And still, no clear victor emerges. The cardinals retreat to their chambers, their minds burdened by the enormity of the choice before them. Some pray. Some plot. Some, like Lawrence, wonder if they are witnessing the will of God—or merely the will of men.
And then, at last, the decision is made.
The white smoke ascends into the sky, billowing from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. The world waits with bated breath. A name is announced in the final vote: Benitez, who wished to be called Innocent, Pope Innocent.
Sure enough as a cardinal expresses, “We will never find a candidate who does not have a black mark against them. We are mortal men. We serve an ideal. We cannot always be an ideal”, Cardinal Benitez’s Switzerland trip to a clinic reveals something disturbing.
When confronted, before Benitez’s announcement as Pope, he revealed to Lawrence that the treatment was “laparoscopic hysterectomy” which he did not undergo.
He reveals that though he was born as a boy, later in his 30s the doctors discovered during the operation of his appendix that he has a uterus and ovaries, with feminine chromosomes he is also a man which the late Pope knew about. He and the Pope considered to remove the female parts of his body, but the night before his flight, he realised that he was mistaken about the idea of surgery.
In Benitez’s words, “I was who I had always been. It seemed to me more of a sin to change His (God’s) handiwork than to leave my body as it was. I am what God made me. And perhaps it is my difference that will make me more useful. I think again of your sermon. I know what it is to exist… between the world’s certainties.”
The newly elected Pope Innocent was a transgender, of which only Dean Thomas Lawrence knew.
For faith is a fragile thing. And power, once given, is never easily surrendered.
Personal Remark
The film Conclave 2024 is a fascinating meditation on power, faith, and identity, raising profound questions about the intersection of gender and authority within one of the most rigidly traditional institutions in the world—the Catholic Church.
In witnessing the journey of Pope Innocent, the first transgender pope, and the theological, political, and personal turmoil that ensues, I am compelled to reflect on the inherent paradox of institutional faith: the simultaneous demand for divine certainty and human fallibility.
Gender has long been a fixed, immovable category within Catholic doctrine. The very idea that the Vicar of Christ could embody a gender identity that defies binary norms challenges not just the conservative factions of the Church but the very theological assumptions that underpin its existence. Pope Innocent’s story is one of existential courage, a refusal to alter the divine handiwork of their own body despite societal and religious pressures.
Their election signifies an unspoken reality: the Church, though an institution of timeless traditions, cannot insulate itself from the evolution of human understanding. The rigid walls of gender doctrine, so meticulously constructed over centuries, tremble under the weight of this revelation.
Yet, the greatest resistance to Pope Innocent’s election does not emerge from theological debates alone but from the intransigent conservatism of figures like Cardinal Tedesco. His intolerance is not merely personal but institutional, emblematic of a worldview that sees deviation from historical dogma as existentially dangerous.
Tedesco’s impassioned condemnation of pluralism—his rejection of Islam, his vision of a militant Church, his lamentation of moral relativism—speaks to a deeper crisis within faith: the inability to reconcile divine truth with human complexity. His intolerance is not simply a rejection of Pope Innocent’s gender identity but a rejection of the ambiguity that faith demands.
True belief, as Dean Thomas Lawrence eloquently argues, must coexist with doubt; faith without doubt is not faith at all, but rigid certainty masquerading as conviction.
The film also underscores the intricate role of language within the College of Cardinals. The multilingual nature of the Conclave reveals how linguistic divides reflect deeper ideological rifts. Latin, the ancient tongue of the Church, serves as a relic of unity, yet it also reinforces a hierarchical structure that privileges those who command it fluently.
Meanwhile, the vernacular languages of the modern Church—Italian, Spanish, English, and others—become the battlegrounds of persuasion, each carrying its own cultural and theological nuances.
Language, rather than being a unifier, becomes a vessel of division, a means through which alliances are forged and power is negotiated. Words, in this most sacred of institutions, are not just expressions of faith but instruments of political maneuvering.
The film represents that in a scene where cardinals were seen divided and grouped according to language, and Cardinal Benitez was all alone as none spoke his language and he does not speak much English and Italian.
Ultimately, Conclave 2024 forces us to confront the uneasy coexistence of tradition and transformation. The hope remains when we see that the general sentiment of the cardinals is tolerance and inclusivism, who were as open to elect someone as Pope who speaks of peace, tolerance and showing divine love the hostile world.
Can a Church that has for centuries defined itself by its unyielding dogma evolve without losing its essence? Pope Innocent’s ascension suggests that faith is not static but dynamic, that divine wisdom may not be found in rigid adherence to the past but in the courageous embrace of the present. Their story is not just a challenge to the Church but to all of us who struggle with the boundaries of belief, identity, and acceptance.
The film’s final moments leave us with no clear resolution, and perhaps that is the point. Faith is not about certainty; it is about the willingness to dwell in mystery. And in that mystery lies the Church’s greatest challenge—and its greatest hope.
Conclave 2024 is not merely a political thriller; it is a study in the paradox of faith—a reminder that even those closest to God must still wrestle with their own humanity. The film leaves us with a question, an echo of our own times: Does power sanctify, or does it corrupt?
