What I Hope the Church Learns From That ‘Conclave’ Ending

This article contains major spoilers for the film Conclave.

When Conclave came out in October of last year, I knew that it was thematically relevant, but I didn’t anticipate just how timely it would become. Just six months after the release of the Oscar-winning political thriller about choosing the next pope, Pope Francis passed away — and as of this week, a real-life conclave has been held and a new pope elected. On May 8, Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV. According to Politico, some of the cardinals voting for the first time this year even admitted to watching Conclave beforehand to better understand what they were about to be doing. Art and life continue to intertwine, and there are many moments in Conclave that (intentionally or not) have felt fairly prophetic since its release — both to conversations within the church and those around our political moment.

With so many people now increasingly aware of the concept of papal elections, many during this week began drawing comparisons between real-life cardinals and the fictional candidates of Conclave: Which one of these is the progressive liberal, like Stanley Tucci’s Cardinal Bellini? Which one is the reactionary conservative, like Sergio Castellitto’s Cardinal Tedesco? These comparisons only go so far, and perhaps they impose our own limited political categories onto a position that is meant to transcend them. Still, it’s interesting to see a newfound literacy and appreciation for the impact of the church and its leaders in the world. 

But Conclave’s message goes beyond papal elections: Before I saw the film, I couldn’t have predicted just how shockingly relevant it would be to me and my experience as a trans person still doing my best to remain in relationship with the church. 

Conclave touches on many things: the symbiotic relationship between faith and doubt, the way God can still work even within corrupt man-made institutions, the responsibility of a leader to bring injustice to light even at the expense of their career — but perhaps its most poignant thematic through-line is the importance of mystery in Christian life. 

Our lead character, Ralph Fiennes’ ever-discerning Cardinal Lawrence, has been handed the weighty task of managing the college of cardinals as they hold their conclave to elect the next pope. Lawrence is a commendable leader in many ways. Some of the most dramatic beats of the film involve him exposing the transgressions of his colleagues, courageously refusing to sweep scandals under the rug, and prioritizing honesty and integrity over reputation and institutional loyalty. And during his opening homily, Lawrence reminds his fellow cardinals about the importance of a leader who humbly doubts: “If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery,” he observes, “and therefore no need for faith.”

Admittedly, though, there is some dramatic irony to Lawrence’s actions throughout the film: In contrast to his stirring homily about the importance of mystery and uncertainty near the start, he seems to believe that his own doubts and uncertainties make him unfit to be a spiritual leader. And more than that, even in his honest mission to uncover injustice, Lawrence is seeking complete certainty that the next candidate for pope will be pure and blameless and avoid creating more scandal or controversy for the witness of the church.

That’s why it’s so significant that in some ways, the man eventually elected pope (arguably through providential circumstances) is the most mysterious and controversial of all. 

In the final minutes of the film, Lawrence learns a great secret: The gentle and selfless Cardinal Benitez, soon to be known as Pope Innocent XIV, was born intersex. Benitez tells Lawrence that he knew nothing about this reality until he had his appendix removed in his mid-30s. During the surgery, the doctor found that he had a uterus, ovaries, and XX chromosomes.  

“It was a very dark time for me. I felt as if my entire life as a priest had been lived in a state of sin,” says Cardinal Benitez. Despite this, he tells Lawrence that the late Holy Father accepted him as he was. While Benitez briefly considered surgery to remove the “female” parts of his body, he eventually realized that the greater sin would be to alter God’s handiwork for the sake of an arbitrary institutional standard. 

“I am what God made me,” Benitez tells Lawrence, “and perhaps it is my difference that will make me useful. I think again of your sermon. I know what it is to exist between the world’s certainties.” 

Faced with these truths from Benitez, Lawrence must suddenly accept many uncertainties all at once. What is this cardinal’s “true” identity? Will the public ever find out about his condition? What will they say, knowing the pope might have lived as a female? Will he be blamed? Does God, in fact, want those with such unique “conditions” to have the highest esteem in the church?

There is a subtle and unspoken irony within Lawrence’s fears about Benitez’s “situation”: In the eyes of the church, this natural biological condition could be viewed as an even graver scandal than any of the true crimes committed by the other cardinals. Those were just misguided choices, after all, easy to forgive. This situation, to some, would be an innate and unchangeable transgression. And that reality is unjust and heartbreaking, one that points to a completely skewed institutional moral compass. 

As a trans person, I’ve been saddened repeatedly in recent years by this common response in church life to the existence of gender-expansive folks in the world. Genesis 1:27 reads, “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Many in the anti-trans (or in the generally anti-LGBTQ+) camp frequently cite Genesis and the Garden of Eden as a rigid, binary template that condemns any experiences or identities that seem to exist outside of it. But in doing so, they distort verses about how everyone reflects the imago dei into a gender purity test. Rather than holding texts like Genesis with humility, realizing that many experiences — trans, intersex, and otherwise — exist today that would not have been realistically included in a broad-strokes story, some Christians view anything that wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the Bible as a defiance of God’s design. 

Exceptions to the simple order and hierarchy to which we so desperately cling can break our brains. We are living in a world begging for certainty, desperate to eliminate anomalies and force every person into the easy boxes we learned in Sunday school and kindergarten. Our brains want an ancient text — written for the simple purpose of knowing God — to become a rulebook for who is and isn’t allowed to know God. But when the ancient text is converted to a system of order and exclusion, exceptions become enemies. In order to preserve the perfect picture we desire, we must attribute gender-expansive people’s differences either to personal sin or impersonal affliction. And when we treat a broad theological picture not just as a picture but as a rule and blueprint to enforce, it becomes an idol.  

Among many other merits of Conclave, I cannot overemphasize to you how touching and meaningful it is to me that the film depicts the deeply personal and vulnerable human experience of an intersex person at a moment when our political powers are quite literally writing the most rigid gender categories into law.

Cardinal Lawrence in Conclave, however, does not buy into this rigidity. As the film comes to a close, he looks at the garments and robes awaiting their owner. He glances at the light out the window. He inhales and exhales. And he realizes that his time as a manager is, for the moment, finished. If God has declared this man innocent, he is innocent. It is time to step back and trust that God’s will shall be done. Indeed, it is time to heed his own words and learn to live with uncertainty.

We think removing all the exceptions will give us peace and security, and eliminate the need for questions and doubts. Deep down, we hope it might even eliminate the need for faith. But when you’re faced with one of these very real exceptions in the flesh, they’re no longer an exception; they’re a person. And if every person is made in the image of God, maybe our categories won’t be able to properly reflect that image until we can balance them with the reality of God’s infinite mystery.