5 preconceived ideas on the conclave

1. The movies tell anything

FAKE – Over the pontificate of Pope Francis, he did not miss new films evoking life within the Vatican. At the end of Pope Benoît XVI pontificate, Italian-Canadian film Habemus Papam (2011) already evoked, and not without humor, the process of election of a pope, embodied for the occasion by Michel Piccoli in one of his last roles on the screen. More surprising, the Franco-Spanish miniseries The Young Pope (2016), stages a Jude Law playing a young, unstable and casual pope, thwarting all the forecasts of those who elected it to this function. A sequel, called The New Pope (2020), will continue in this iconoclastic approach by embroidering, between conspiracy and cynicism, on cardinal intrigues to manage the authority of the pontiff.

More recently, this is the film Conclave (2024), the aptly named, who made an impression. First of all because it evokes the election of a new pope in the form of a psychological thriller, with Anglo-Saxon know-how. To the point of receiving the Golden Globe for the best scenario and eight Oscar nominations, winning, there too that of the best suitable scenario.

The director was strongly made to make the atmosphere of the Roman palaces and the interiors of the Vatican, with a detailed concern on costumes and rituals. Not without some improbabilities, of course, to let a few romantic springs animate the subject. But in the end, the film rather faithfully transcribes the conclave process. And he was a good success of audience in the United States as in France, in these months when the atmosphere at the end of the reign of the pontificate of Pope Francis is carefully maintained by the media.

Twelve years after the last conclave, while the continuous news channels occupy the media space, Conclave has become a reference for many. And a way of imagining what is happening in these corridors during this process where silence and secret predominate with the rest of the world.

2. Apart from the conclave, what is happening in the Vatican is no longer interested in many people

FAKE – The venerable and ancient Vatican institution still fascinates crowds. Is it because it represents a form of its permanence in a liquid and uncertain world? In any case, the image of the boat of Saint Peter holding good in the middle of the storm works in our contemporary imagination.

Add to that the specificity of Rome: the genius of the eternal city is to have known, through many hazards, upheavals and caricatures, to offer the city of the Vatican a mille-feuille of ancient culture, artistic genius of the Renaissance, Kitsch baroque overflow and contemporary classicism. A superposition of dreams of power, of calls for evangelical radicality, of compromise with quite unique history, and which leaves room for everyone to progress in their own personal synthesis. In short, an expression (not the only) of the Catholicity which signals to the world.

3. The election of the Pope is a monarchical process exceeded

True and false – Yes, the pontiff’s mode of election – a sovereign, as its name suggests – may seem both archaic and confusing. Beyond the rituals of the Roman liturgy, which also surprises observers is this model of election of an official with international visibility.

How can less than 150 delegates from around the world and who barely know each other for many, can they elect one of them for such an exposed function? How can this patriarchal and hierarchical system which so strongly detonates with our modern and often jostled societies, can it still attract the curiosity and the interest of a large number?

Perhaps it is precisely this “difference” assumed in the name of a long and slow story that detonates in the geopolitical hubbub. Because the paradox is good that this process will elect a religious leader with an international aura as well, at the head of a Catholic community of 1.4 billion faithful, as a political official, head of the smallest state of the planet – but to the impressive international diplomatic network.

The whole ritual, even if it has been strongly stripped of outdated references, remains that of a monarchical election of divine law. But let’s remember: The one he makes access to the throne of Saint Peter does not have any kingdomif not a diverse and often heterogeneous community of believers. The cardinals who have celebrated the masses in recent days at the Saint-Pierre basilica have recalled it insistently: it is the figure of stone which sets the tone. That of an apostle of communion and a servant of a master much greater than him.

4. If there is so much secret in the election, it is because the church has something to hide

FAKE – The world keeps rustling at the time of a papal election. But the time of the conclave breaks with this noise, by imposing the secret of the deliberations (the word conclave comes from the Latin cum clavewith a key). And not only to the cardinals, by the way. At the Pauline chapel, a discreet celebration invited the prelates and the lay people who support the spiritual and material life of the conclave to take an oath on the Gospel, by committing to hold the secret on what they are witnessing. Here are both nuns of the pontifical sacristy as of the confessors requisitioned, or doctors asked to accompany the cardinals, especially the most sick among them. Without forgetting the staff of the Sainte-Marthe house, the apostolic palates, the leaders of the Swiss guards, and the director of the security services.

This carefully codified retreat from the cardinals can actually intrigue. Could it be because they prefer to “wash their dirty laundry with the family”? And if, on the contrary, We enclose the cardinals during the conclave so that they are free ? Because history has shown how these precautions are necessary to avoid any interference from the outside world in the process. In centuries not so distant, heads of state and European kings are not deprived to guide the vote for the benefit of their sphere of influence. By preventing such a candidate or by publicly favoring another another, they were able to put pressure on the capacity of action of the future Pope, especially in his diplomatic prerogatives.

Are these times over? In recent days have shown, in Rome, that in the Vatican too, influence groups are still trying to impose their agenda. The American Catholic Information Site NCR has thus mentioned the unhappy coincidence between the nine days of prayer for the mourning of Pope Francis and the week for America, an annual fundraising operation for Catholic projects in Rome. An operation which, for the occasion, invites business leaders and philanthropists to great standing receptions in the eternal city. Cardinals were also invited for the occasion before the conclave, in these evenings which are the occasion for discussions and typical meetings of American political lobbyists. Among the donor organizations present, we can cite the Papal Foundation and the Napa Institute, also present for their annual pilgrimage to Rome, after Easter.

Venerable, richly endowed institutes, which campaign for a conservative approach to American and global Catholicism. During their evening at Pontifical Saint-Thomas Aquinas university, you could buy and taste bottles of a special cuvée for the jubilee year and evoking the Holy Trinity, for a price between 50 and 125 dollars. The Papal Foundation distributed, according to NCR, last year nearly $ 15 million in grants, scholarships and humanitarian aid. An amount that should double and the ambition, in the long term, is to collect $ 750 million from American philanthrops in the years to come. “Provided that we have the right pope,” added a member of the Papal Foundation, which remained anonymous, questioned by the Time.

5. Finally, this vote is mainly politics

True and false – During the conclave, everything is put in place so that the cardinals live a human and spiritual time which leaves only the least possible space for calculations and forecasts. The age limit fixed to be a voter cardinal (80 years) testifies to this. This avoids the perverse effects of a form of gerontocracy. Likewise, since the vote is made at two-thirds of the voices expressed, the election is built by tending towards a large consensus.

To reach this high limit, the various voting towers are used to first identify the natural candidates who bring together a good part of the votes. Then, over the days, it is a question of eliminating the most divisive candidates to favor those who bring together. And the objective and subjective factors of each other are numerous to justify this membership. The figure of Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Benoît XVI, has consensus in his time, because of his discreet personality and his doctrinal solidity. Then, later, that of Cardinal Bergoglio seems to have reassured by his clear vision on the future of the Church and his will to clearly face the crises within the Church.

The spiritual dimension of this approach must also be underlined. Each cardinal is sworn in on the Bible to commit to his vote an inner choice, lit by prayer and listening. Thus, the silence that reigns during the conclave is not only the will to obstruct the curiosity of journalists and lobbyists. It is also a necessary condition for everyone to measure a process that often exceeds it.

Many have stressed the fact that a conclave welcomes the action of the Holy Spirit. The expression is beautiful and testifies to faith, in the Catholic Church, that the decision -making processes far exceed those who live them. In the book of acts of the apostles already, the first disciples had developed a decision system to replace Judas and thus symbolically reform the College of the Apostles of Christ (AC 1, 23-26). Serious and known candidates are presented. We pray “on” them. Then, we draw a name. The conclave for the election of the Pope is distantly referring to this voting system, even if, with the centuries, the draw has lost its relevance.

Chance ? Collective discernment? But is that good as the Holy Spirit works? Perhaps, there too, believers are invited to a certain modesty. Because to hear some, The Holy Spirit would be a kind of divine ghost which would spread in the Sistine Chapel to direct the vote. We are far from what the Holy Spirit is, as it is revealed by Christ himself and the Scriptures: the vital breath which gives life, the one which comes from the dead and which reconciles the broken hearts. This spirit which manifests the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father. Whoever interceives for us, like a good defender. Whoever makes the prophets speak and defends the little ones and the voiceless.

SO ? Where is the Holy Spirit in these days of conclave? No one knows how he blows, neither where he comes from, nor where he is going. Because his work does not allow itself to be locked in a chapel, even to the impressive frescoes evoking the last times. If the election of a pope is of course experienced as a strong moment within the Catholic world, it does not concentrate in any way more spiritual energy than what is experienced day after day by those who try to testify, sometimes in difficult or dangerous circumstances, of the love of God for each in the name of their faith. This is what Pope Francis put in light by his simple style and proximity to the poorest. This is where the Holy Spirit works too. Long before the conclave. Well beyond any election.