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VATICAN CITY — There has long been a Vatican taboo against openly talking about a conclave when a pope is sick: It’s considered gauche to speculate about the election of a new pope while the current one is fighting for his life. And that is certainly true as Pope Francis battles double pneumonia at Rome’s Gemelli hospital.
But the surprising success of “Conclave” the film and its momentum going into Sunday’s Academy Awards have thrust the arcane rules, glorious ceremony and supreme drama of one of the Catholic Church’s most solemn moments into popular culture. And it’s put the Catholic hierarchy in something of a bind as it simultaneously prays for Francis.
The film can’t be dismissed as distasteful or blasphemous, since it treats the gravity of a papal election with respect and accurately portrays the ancient rituals and contemporary problems facing today’s Catholic Church. Both the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano and the Avvenire daily of the Italian bishops conference gave “Conclave” rave reviews.
Granted, those reviews were published before Francis entered the hospital Feb. 14 with a complex lung infection that has taken him out of commission for the longest time of his 12-year papacy.
It’s unclear if the newspapers would have published them after Francis’ health took such a dire turn. That’s even more the case since it’s clear from the opening scenes that the figure of Francis is very much present in the film, from the opening scenes in the Vatican’s modern Santa Marta hotel where Francis chose to live to one of the figures central to the plot.
But at the very least, the life-imitating-art coincidence of “Conclave” the movie finding mass popular appeal at a time when the world’s media has descended on Rome to monitor every update of Francis’ health has certainly piqued interest in what might happen in a real-life conclave.
Author Harris knows it’s a sensitive time
“Conclave,” director Edward Berger’s adaptation of the Robert Harris novel starring Ralph Fiennes as the dean of the College of Cardinals, has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It goes into Sunday’s Oscars with a Bafta win for best picture and a SAG award for best ensemble.
Harris is well aware of the sensitivity of the moment, and how the surreal turn of events of an ailing pope dovetailing with an Oscar campaign had made his book and the film relevant to say the least. But he is adamant against trying to milk the moment for publicity.
“I’ve been refusing all requests to talk about it and a future conclave because I think that’s in extreme bad taste,” Harris told The Associated Press. “I really hope he’s got some more years yet.”
Francis suffered a setback on Friday, and was placed on noninvasive mechanical ventilation after a coughing fit in which he inhaled vomit that had to be extracted. He was up, however, on Saturday morning drinking coffee, suggesting he was not dependent on the mask to breathe. Doctors said they need 24 to 48 hours to evaluate how and if the isolated episode affected his overall clinical condition, while keeping his prognosis guarded.
All of which has made “Conclave” the film a bit too close for comfort in more ways than one for anyone following Francis’ plight and concerned about what it means for the Catholic Church.
Mild spoiler alert
To recap: The film opens with the death of the pope and turns around the political maneuvering and manipulations behind the election of his successor. Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes) is dean of the College of Cardinals, who must organize the conclave amid his own crisis of faith.
With the future of the church weighing on him, he has to contend with secrets, scandals, smear campaigns and surprising twists, while ensuring the election’s integrity.
Massimo Faggioli, theologian at Villanova University, said the film was “sadly effective” in illustrating the institutional instability that the church is going through now, as well as the ease with which a single act or allegation of misconduct can ruin someone.
“The main threats (are) now coming not from the outside (Napoleon, or Hitler, or secularization), but from the inside (especially the fear of another sexual scandal),” he said.
Berger certainly takes some creative liberties. Lawrence, for example, would have been excommunicated two or possibly three times for his efforts to navigate the intrigue, given the ban on communications with the outside world during a conclave and canon laws governing the seal of the confessional and the sealing of the papal apartment after a pope has died.
But this is Hollywood, and His Eminence can be forgiven.
Catholic media loved the film
Avvenire, which hews to the Vatican establishment line, praised the film for its sumptuous beauty, twists of plot and “anything but trivial” commentary about the current state of the church.
“Let’s face it: ‘Conclave,’ which takes us to the heart of one of the world’s most mysterious and secret events, is a highly entertaining film, especially for an American audience that isn’t terribly picky,” Avvenire said Dec. 20, when the film opened in Italian theaters and well before Francis got sick.
Writing in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on Feb. 1, critic Alessandra Comazzi highlighted the short but critical turn played by Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes.
As a longtime critic for the La Stampa daily, Comazzi is well aware of the Vatican taboo of openly talking of a conclave. But in an interview, she said the film managed to treat a conclave as thriller without causing offense. She said the Vatican newspaper was only too happy to publish her rave.
“The dean Lawrence has to govern the conclave and liberate it from these false prophets,” she said. “And I think also from the ecclesial and religious point of view, the director managed to do it in a very respectful way.”
But a cardinal close to Francis didn’t
That said, someone who has actually participated in a conclave gave the film something of a thumbs down.
“My experience of being in at least one conclave was not that it was some sort of scene of political backroom plotting of how to get your candidate elected,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the retired archbishop of Boston, wrote in a Feb. 7 blog post.
O’Malley voted in the 2013 conclave that elected Francis pope and is one of his closest allies. He said he and his brother cardinals were well aware that millions of Catholics were praying from afar “so that the Holy Spirit would guide us in our deliberations.”
“And, of course, at the moment when each cardinal votes, you take your ballot, stand in front of Michelangelo’s image of Christ in the ‘Last Judgment’ and swear before God that you are going to vote for the person that you believe is God’s will for the church,” he wrote.
“It’s a much different experience than what they depicted in the movie,” he wrote. “For all its artistic and entertainment value, I don’t think the movie is a good portrayal of the spiritual reality of what a conclave is.”
— Associated Press writer Hilary Fox in London contributed to this report.