What can the election of a new pope teach us about Mormonism? About nuanced Christianity? About what happens when men who have always known privilege are forced to confront those who have lived without it? About what happens when a person whose life has been defined by faith loses that faith?

What insights can it offer to the idea that one person—one man—can adequately speak for God?

I pondered these and other questions watching “Conclave,” which this week was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Ralph Fiennes. It is fictional and starts with the death of the old pope, then takes the viewer inside the Sistine Chapel for the conclave, where all of the Catholic Church’s cardinals come from throughout the world to vote on a new pope. This is a days-long process with very quiet, subtle campaigning and more than a few twists and turns, although the movie consists largely of talking and silence. Even the biggest twist is not a highly charged moment but a quiet, unexpected admission.

I didn’t go into ready for this level of asking deep questions. I went into it expecting some Dan Brown-esque intrigue—plotting, relics, puzzles, all protecting ancient religious secrets.

It turned out all the secrets weren’t that ancient, the puzzle was what was happening in the mind of the main character and the plot twist at the end made the whole story complicated—but also so very not.

What it was instead was a look at what people will do for power, how religion can be wielded as a tool for good and evil and how faith and doubt co-exist. How they need each other.

“Conclave” follows Dean Lawrence (Fiennes), who is running a conclave split between those who wish to see the Catholic Church progress with the times, including embracing those who have been historically marginalized (including, gasp! women) and those who see tolerance, movement toward the social norms and acceptance of the validity of other faiths as a sin that is dragging the church down and must be rectified. They discuss similar issues we in the Mormon and adjacent space have about the church, but in a way that was safer for me—I don’t have any emotional hangups with Catholicism.

Three moments stood out to me. First: Dean Lawrence, who is adamant that he does not want to be pope (though that is what they all say, even when later words and actions contradict that—can you believe this man’s professed lack of ambition or does he, too, strive to be the most powerful man in Christianity?), gives the opening sermon of the conclave. It is not what the other cardinals expected:

“St. Paul said be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. To work together, to grow together, we must be tolerant, no one person or faction seeking to dominate another. And speaking to the Ephesians who were of course a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the church is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength. And over the course of many years in the service of our mother the church, let me tell you there is one thing which I have to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end … Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts.”

We will never know everything. We will never know most things. Where we came from, where we’re going, if we’re in fact going anywhere after death—I do not know. I cannot know. I can choose to believe, I can choose to have faith in something, but it is not a lack of faith to recognize that I don’t have all the answers, and I doubt the things I am told. Doubt is what drives most of us to ask and seek answers to questions. It is a sacred duty of believers to doubt.

Second: There is an order of nuns who takes care of the conclave. The main nun, Sister Agnes (Isabella Rosselini), is the sole woman in a room with 108 cardinals when a disagreement breaks out—loud, discordant, uncomfortable. As men are yelling, her voice is at first hard to hear. But she will not let herself be ignored. As they quiet, Sister Agnes speaks: “Although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears.”

To give you the rest of the speech would spoil a major plot point, so I won’t. But her words hit me. How many times have we sisters been told to be invisible? To be silent? To be told we are shrill and we need to know when to stop speaking? We are invisible when we are not invited to meetings, when our words are ignored, when our labor is undervalued or simply not valued at all.

Yet God has given us eyes and ears. And a mouth, and a brain. We see, we hear, and we deserve to speak and be heard—as equals. We are not guests at Jesus Christ’s table. We belong there.

The final moment comes when the conclave is interrupted by activity on the outside. One cardinal who wants to be pope, who wants to drag the Catholic Church back into, well, the Middle Ages, demands a holy war against Muslims, against tolerance, against progress. He wants a crusade. He is convinced that this is the way of God—to kill those who do not believe as this man does. (It’s funny how many people are convinced God shares their exact opinions, their likes and dislikes, their prejudices and bigotry. It is not unique to Catholicism. One look at the Christian nationalism sweeping the United States today shows it is a very popular thing, to create God in one’s own image.)

In response, another cardinal, who has been a mystery throughout the movie, stands and calls, “My brother cardinal … my brother cardinal …” Like Sister Agnes, at first his voice goes unheard amid the cacophony. But finally, the men are listening. Cardinal Benitez speaks, slowly, enunciating each word, watching them land with his audience. In an attempt to adequately bring you into the scene, which is as important as the words, I’ve italicized my own description of it:

 “With respect, what do you know about war? He pauses, as it sinks in that this man who calls for war knows nothing of the reality of it. He is European and has spent his life in service of the church in Italy.  I carried out my ministry in the Congo, in Baghdad, in Kabul. I’ve seen the lines of the dead and wounded, Christians and Muslims. When you say we have to fight, what is it you think we’re fighting? You think it’s those deluded men who have carried out these terrible acts today? No, my brother … here he switches to Spanish, his native tongue … that which you’re fighting is here. He puts his hand on his heart. Here, inside each and every one of us, if we give in to hate now. If we speak of sides instead of speaking for every man and woman.”

I wish every religious leader, every religious person, lived that, regardless of their beliefs. I wish we were, all of us, on the same side—the side of peace, of conservation, of love, of knowledge, of nonviolence.  

Photo credit: Focus Features

2024 was a year for movies that forced difficult questions about religion on their viewers. Although “Heretic” didn’t get any Oscar nods, it inspired a lot of critical thinking and discussion here at The Exponent II. Explore some of those pieces:

Mr. Reed from Heretic is right: Polygamy is Mormonism’s biggest problem

Guest post: Why I won’t be seeing Heretic as a former missionary

I was a Mormon sister missionary, and here’s what I thought of Heretic, the new horror movie about missionaries