Conclave and 6 Other Papal Election Movies to Watch While Waiting for a New Pope

Breathless anticipation for white smoke or black; seas of men in red gowns and white; enigmatic meetings behind the sealed doors of the Sistine Chapel. There is something defiantly old world about how the Catholic Church still selects its next supreme pontiff—the man said to be ordained by God to sit on the Chair of St. Peter.

Like a blast from the medieval world, the papal conclave remains one of the most mysterious and speculated-upon election processes: an event made up of a College of Cardinals casting paper ballots that are subsequently destroyed, but whose weight carries with it the fate of the Bishop of Rome, and therefore more than a billion people’s faith from around the world. While non-cardinals are excluded from the inner-workings of the vote, it hasn’t stopped filmmakers, novelists, and Hollywood sensationalists from offering their own musings and daydreams about the event. So while we wait for the next pope to be anointed, here are some of the most amusing or informative fictions about the process—including more than just last year’s Conclave.

Conclave

Of course we still need to begin with what is both the most recent film on the subject, as well as arguably the best. Edward Berger’s Conclave is a work of propulsive fiction, but one based on a book intent on accurately capturing the machinations of the electoral process inside the Vatican.

Set after the death of a fictional and unnamed pope, Conclave follows Richard Harris’ source material and acute attention to detail. Through a breakneck speed we witness how the Dean of the College of Cardinals, here Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), is required to prepare the security and sanctity of the conclave; we observe the silence of the nuns who wait on their often aged or elderly patriarchs; and we witness the blocking out of daylight while the Camerlengo makes sure the deceased pope’s apartments are likewise sealed away until after the election is finished.

Yet despite acutely studying the processes, Harris and now director Berger craft what turns out to be a thrilling allegory for how all modern political power is wielded and fought over in the 21st century. Indeed, Berger makes much of contrasting the modernity of the priests’ technology with the ancient mystique of their rituals. They are still modern men, however, who find themselves devolving into a conflict of liberal and conservative factions, progressive and regressive, vying for power with the battle lines being drawn over how to treat immigrants, women, and other versions of “the other.” It also has a spectacular finale.

The Two Popes

For those looking for something a little closer to reality than Conclave’s eventual sensationalism, or perhaps something to just remind us of the beloved pontiff who has gone to Heaven, we might recommend Fernando Meirelles’ fairly underrated The Two Popes. Despite being nominated for three Oscars, including for Jonathan Pryce as the man who would become Pope Francis and Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI, The Two Popes has long stayed under the radar, probably because it was released on Netflix.

Be that as it may, this is a real movie as well as a bit of speculative fiction about the contentious but ultimately admiring relationship between Pope Francis and the first Chair of St. Peter occupant to retire from the papacy while alive in about 600 years (Pope Gregory XII was the previous pope to last resign way back in 1415!). Contrasted as a strict traditionalist versus a progressive reformer, the film observes how lived experiences can radically shift two men ostensibly chosen by God for the same infallible position. It also makes for a surprisingly wry and disarming bromance. There is likewise quite a bit about the political machinations of the Vatican and how they made Francis’ surprise ascension possible.

We Have a Pope

Released two years before Pope Benedict XVI resigned the papacy, Nanni Moretti’s Italian comedy has a hint of the prescient with its depiction of troubled priests. Set in a universe where, apparently, few or none of the Cardinals in the conclave actually want to be pope, by a fluke of luck one outsider, Cardinal Melville (Michel Piccoli), is elected supreme pontiff. He initially accepts with some hesitation, but upon facing the cheering crowds of St. Peter’s Square, he flinches. The pope will not go outside and greet the masses! In fact, he doesn’t want to be pope!

What follows is an odd and strangely warm comedy about the how heavy lies the crown (or the Holy See) and perhaps a bit of a fanciful prayer about how thoughtful and self-reflective we’d like our leaders to be… even if it comes to the point of this being about a gray-haired pope who needs to be psychoanalyzed into coming out of his basilica.

Angels & Demons

Now we begin getting into the real fun stuff for those who are looking for a little escapism from real-world terrors in their papal pictures. Thus enters the Vatican’s perhaps least favorite tourism booster, Dan Brown. The American novelist who both criticizes the secrecy of the Church and romanticizes its pageantry was the guy that gave the world The Da Vinci Code. Before that controversy (which in retrospect appears quaint), he authored Angels & Demons, an ostensible murder mystery whodunit set in Vatican City during a papal conclave, complete with secret societies, kidnapped cardinals, and of course a murdered pope.

Director Ron Howard’s movie was made after The Da Vinci Code and is thus retrofitted to be a sequel. It also benefits from this change, with Howard and producer Brian Grazer learning from their mistakes in the somewhat stilted Da Vinci adaptation by making Angels & Demons a pure potboiler thriller hung together by lurid imagery and Hollywood hokum. It also, frankly, tries to depict the papal conclave with more respect and affection than the novel with the new surprise winner of the election at the end. Likewise Ewan McGregor as the Camerlengo gets some juicy scenes as an empathetic young priest who finds himself having to stare down the apparent menace of a resuscitated Illuminati, the society of scientists and intellectuals whom the Catholic Church drove underground and to seeming extinction after a round of torture and execution in the late 18th century.

The Godfather, Part III

It might be a short scene, but there is 100 percent a papal conclave featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s contentious The Godfather, Part III. It is even a fictionalized account of Pope John Paul I’s short rise and reign. Indeed, John Paul I died 33 days after his election. There has thus been much speculation made about how and why this pontiff’s reign was so short-lived, which Coppola and Mario Puzo lean into by depicting their version Pope John Paul I (who has a different Christian name at birth) as a truly saintly individual who comes within inches of saving Don Michael Corleone’s soul (Al Pacino) after getting him to confess his sins, including the seemingly irredeemable act of ordering the murder of his own brother.

Yet Pope John Paul I’s good deeds are quickly snuffed out by a poisoned cup of tea because of a scheming archbishop who drove the Vatican Bank into massive debt. This deficit, it should be noted, did occur, so Coppola leans into the conspiracy theory that to get out of it, the Vatican entered into a real estate plot with the mafia. In the film, this in turn leads to a straight-laced pope’s murder. Also, because it’s a Coppola movie, there’s an opera!

The Pope Must Die

A movie whose making is more interesting than the finished film, The Pope Must Die (or The Pope Must Diet! as it was curiously released as in the U.S. so as to not further offend American Catholics) was not originally meant to be a movie. Director and co-writer Peter Richardson developed it as a three-episode series for Channel 4 where it was greenlit and then later canceled due to public outcry over the title. It would sever Richardson’s relationship with Channel 4, and he went on to make it as a cheap comedy film in then-Yugoslavia with Robbie Coltrane as its star.

Yep, the Harry Potter movies’ future Hagrid stars as a bumbling, dim-witted country priest who is mistakenly elected pope by the College of Cardinals (they confused his name with someone else) and is thus forced to sit upon the Chair of St. Peter’s where he gets a front row seat at the alleged corruption and double-dealing in the Vatican Bank. When he attempts to put a stop to it, the mafia puts a hit on the pope’s head! It’s funnier than it sounds as a kind of reverse-Godfather Part III (although it began development concurrently with that film) and is mostly an excuse for Coltrane to do pratfalls while wearing a pointy hat.

EuroTrip

Admittedly, we’re now getting into pure silliness. But believe me there is an entire subsection of Millennials out there who in addition to having the words “Scotty Doesn’t Know” permanently emblazoned onto their brains’ squishy gray matter also learned in the (ahem) broadest of strokes how a papal election works thanks to the climax of EuroTrip.

In the film, this occurs as the still-know-nothing-Scotty (Scott Mechlowicz) follows a German girl he’s never met but is convinced is the love of his life (Jessica Boehrs) to the Vatican. There she and the audience get a very dumbed down crash course in how a papal conclave works—with black smoke and white—as a couple of dumb American kids goof around Pope John Paul II’s chambers, try on his hat, and accidentally trick the world into thinking one pope has died and another has been elected inside of 20 minutes. Don’t worry, Johnny Paul is cool with it, and even rooting for Scotty to get the girl on international TV after tricking the masses of St. Peter’s into believing they have on their hands “one a-crazy pope!”

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