Speculation surrounding a conclave to elect a pope is a time-honoured tradition.
Conclave the film, a moody 2024 political thriller, introduced many laypeople to the ancient selection process with its arcane rules and grand ceremony, albeit with a silver screen twist packed full of palace intrigue and surprise.
“He committed a mortal sin and would be automatically excommunicated. Such an action would be egregiously wrong,” Reese said.
In addition to that, a cardinal paying for votes, as shown in the film, is unheard of in modern times, said Cavanaugh, and the politicking is exaggerated.
The movie errs in making cardinals into either liberal or conservative champions, said Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington.
“Those labels don’t help us,” he said because cardinals are very cautious in expressing their opinions and “even someone we think is a liberal cardinal is pretty conservative by secular standards.”
And he added that even in an unusually large conclave like this year’s, the rule requiring the next pope wins at least a two-thirds majority of the vote ensures that “whatever we call extreme” likely won’t get enough votes.
