Speculation surrounding a conclave to elect a pope is a secular tradition. But for the imminent conclave following the Death of Pope FrancisThe ranks of the Vatican chair experts inflated thanks to Hollywood.
“Conclave” the film, a bad humor 2024 Political thrillerintroduced many lay people to Ancient selection process With its arcanic rules and its large ceremony, but with a silver screen touch filled with intrigue and surprise of the palace.
Although it has its criticisms, the film deals with the gravity of a papal election with respect and precisely depicts many rituals and contemporary problems to which the Catholic Church today. But the Vatican experts warn the movie Do not get everything correctly.
Here is an overview of what the “conclave” is going well – and badly – on the conclaves. (Future spoilers.)
Landscape and aesthetic
The film excels to recreate the appearance of a conclave.
“The film goes a lot. They tried to accurately reproduce the Vatican staging,” said William Cavanaugh, professor of Catholic studies at DEPAUL University in Chicago, in an email. “They show that a large part of the drama is around pre -conversations pre -on between the cardinals.”
This is not a perfect recreation, according to Reverend Thomas Reese, principal analyst of the News Service Religion and Vatican Expert.
He described the “wonderful” film’s production values, but noted slight deviations in the Cardinals’ dress.
“Red in cardinals’ clothes was a deep red, while reality is more orange. Frankly, I better like the Hollywood version,” said Reese, a Jesuit priest who wrote “inside the Vatican: the politics and organization of the Catholic Church”, said in an email.
Papal protocols
The film is aligned with real expectations for a rapid conclave, said Massimo Faggioli, professor of historical theology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.
“A long conclave would send the message from a divided church and perhaps on the verge of a schism. The history of the conclaves of the last century is really a story of short conclaves,” he said by e-mail.
Reese underlined other differences. Although the voting process was accurately represented, he said, the ballots are not burned after each vote, but after each session, which is generally two votes.
Holes of the intrigue saint
There are some particularly blatant errors which, if they were corrected, would lead to a very different film.
A key character in the film, the archbishop of Kabul, Afghanistan, arrives just before the conclave with documents declaring that the deceased pope had made him a cardinal “in pectore” – “in secret” – allowing him to vote for the next pope.
“The biggest error in the film was the admission of a cardinal to Pectore in the conclave,” said Reese. “If the name is not announced publicly by the Pope in the presence of the College of Cardinals, he is not allowed to attend a conclave.”
Cavanaugh agreed and noted that even if the torsion of the film on the archbishop of Kabul was eccentric, it indicates a certain truth about the conclaves.
“The cardinals do not always know who they get when they elect a pope,” he said. “If the cardinals knew how (Jorge Mario) Bergoglio would be as Pope Francis, many of them would not have voted for him. Pius IX was elected as a liberal and transformed into an archcrender. John XXIII was supposed to be a Jolly Care-Kurnet Pope, and he unleashed Vatican II, ” A series of modernization reforms.
Another more bizarre scenario of the film implies the dean of the College of Cardinals breaking the seal of the confessional by revealing to another cardinal what a nun has confessed to him, said Reese.
“He committed a deadly sin and would be automatically excommunicated. Such an action would be delightfully erroneous,” said Reese.
In addition to that, a cardinal paying votes, as the film shows, is unknown in modern times, said Cavanaugh, and politics is exaggerated.
And politics too.
The film is mistaken by making cardinals in liberal or conservative champions, said Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington.
“These labels do not help us,” he said because the cardinals are very cautious to express their opinions and “even someone we think we are a liberal cardinal is quite conservative according to secular standards.”
And he added that even in an unusually important conclave like that of this year, the rule requiring that the next Pope earns at least a majority of two thirds guarantees that “everything we call extreme” will probably not get enough votes.
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The editors of the Associated Press, Giovanna Dell’orto and Nicole Winfield, contributed to this report.
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