Conclave 2024 Movie Review

 

Conclave 2024 Starring Ralph Fiennes

A New Movie on Papal Selection Stirs Controversy

Conclave is a 2024 film depicting, in almost docudrama fashion, the fictional death of a beloved pope followed by a conclave conducted by the College of Cardinals. The film concludes with the conclave's election of a new pope, selected from among several intriguing but of course imperfect candidates. Conclave was released on October 25, 2024. It is two hours long. Conclave has an all-star, international cast. Conclave is based on the 2016 novel by the British writer Robert Harris. Harris is the prodigiously talented, multiple-award-winning author of fifteen bestsellers. He often writes historical fiction, including novels set during World War II and the Roman Empire.

Edward Berger directed. Berger's 2022 film, All Quiet on the Western Front, also an adaptation of a novel, won multiple BAFTA and Academy Awards. Volker Bertelmann, a German composer who won BAFTA and Academy Awards for his score for All Quiet on the Western Front, scores the film. Conclave is a political thriller. Bertelmann's score heightens the film's depiction of slow-burning, quiet tension in an atmosphere of grandeur and high stakes. Hear a sample here.

Rottentomatoes awards Conclave a 93% professional reviewer score; amateur reviews award it an 83% score. Oscar buzz swirls. Prognosticators predict that Conclave is in the running for nominations for best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best acting nods to more than one cast member.

Conclave's lead, Ralph Fiennes (pronounced Rafe Fines) was nominated for, but did not win, Academy Awards for 1994's Schindler's List and 1997's The English Patient. Many speculate that Conclave might finally allow Fiennes to grasp a golden statuette while thanking everyone from his agent to his mother.

Conclave, both novel and film, includes a twist ending. That ending has stirred up controversy. Some want viewers to hate and boycott Conclave. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro acknowledges that he has "read a bunch of Robert Harris books" and that he assesses Harris as a "terrific author," and a "really, really good writer." Shapiro also acknowledges that the "huge cast" is "stellar" including "an international coterie of stars … some of my favorite actors" in a "beautifully produced" "prestige production." Shapiro insists that one must be "pissed" at Conclave. The film, Shapiro rants, is "in the guise of a movie about the wonders of the Catholic Church" but it's really "about the evils of the Catholic Church." "This movie is about … how the Church must become a progressive bastion." "Catholics all over the world should be extraordinarily pissed at this movie," Shapiro says, "If you are a Christian believer, if you're a person who just believes in traditional religion, you should be upset at the hijacking of one of the great institutions of world religion on behalf of progressive causes."

Shapiro is not alone. In an October 22 video, Father Jonathan Meyer tells his forty-seven thousand subscribers, "Do not watch this movie!" Angelus, an online Catholic magazine, condemns Conclave as "long and boring … badly written, poorly researched, half-baked mystery … unwitting comedy. It is so simplistic, ignorant, and shallow that it feels like it was written for an audience of 12-year-olds … a rather predictable plot, cardboard characters, and a whole lot of cliches and stereotypes … full of bias against the Catholic Church … just plain bad." In the film, according to Angelus reviewer Stefano Rebeggiani, the cardinals care only "about money and power," and they are all "corrupt and two-faced … moronic."

Two warnings: in the review, below, I will disagree with those condemning Conclave. I love Conclave. Conclave is profoundly respectful, and indeed celebratory of Catholicism. Some viewers, hungry for meaning, self-sacrifice, discipline, and tradition, and lost in today's post-Christian nihilism and narcissism, might be moved to consider converting to Catholicism after seeing this film. But that's not why I love Conclave. Second warning. I will reveal the "twist" ending. If you don't want to know how Conclave ends, stop reading now. Just know that this movie-lover encourages you to see this film, which I award ten out of ten stars.

I am a cradle Catholic, child of two cradle Catholics, both of whom hail from tiny Catholic villages in Eastern Europe. Some of my relatives in Czechoslovakia made great sacrifices to remain Catholic in spite of Communist punishments exacted against them exactly because of their faith. In 1989, during an anti-Soviet protest in Poland, in the medieval square in Krakow, I and hundreds of other street protesters were protected from a phalanx of armed Zomo, riot police, by an unbroken line of unarmed Dominican priests. My poor, working class parents sacrificed dearly to send all six of us through eight years of Catholic school. I've published three books and quite a few articles that defend the faith. When I was seeking a tenure-track job, I know for a fact that I was de-listed from consideration from a couple of jobs exactly because I am Catholic.

I saw Conclave with a friend, so I couldn't do what I wanted to do – remain in the theater and watch the entire movie again. The twist that gets Shapiro's panties in a bunch, and that has horrified so many of my fellow Catholics, occurs exclusively in the final moments of the film. Had the twist never occurred, I would have loved the movie just as much. In other words, my ideological approval or disagreement with the final twist is not the reason I loved this film. But, again, as a lifelong, devout, dues-paying, daily-rosary-praying, Catholicism-defending Catholic, I saw nothing to be offended by, nothing shocking, and, indeed, nothing not-Catholic in the twist. Rather, the final twist is an ingenious way to get Catholics thinking and talking about important matters. More on that, below.

I love Conclave because it is gorgeous to look at. Its budget is said to be the modest amount of $20 million, but it looks more expensive. Berger makes movie magic and plops his viewer into the Sistine Chapel, where, of course, Berger was not allowed to film. Production designer Suzie Davies oversaw a ten-week recreation of the Sistine Chapel at Cinecitta studios in Rome. Film is – duh – a visual medium and if a movie isn't worth looking at, I don't care what message it is trying to send. Conclave sends a message of beauty, grandeur, and timelessness, external and internal. Its characters are each, in their own flawed, human ways, trying, in the face of buffeting waves, to maintain a 2,000 year old institution. Each character is convinced that his approach is the only approach that will keep the Church breathing. That's what drives them – their honest investment in an ideal – not, as uncharitable reviews suggest, their "corruption."

There's a scene in Conclave, shot from above, that depicts the cardinals walking in the rain, each carrying a white umbrella. I will, soon, I hope, pay to see this movie again, including just that scene. The film's beauty is not just about prettiness. Each choice in lighting and color conveys richer meanings.

Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence. He is the Dean of the College of Cardinals. The recently deceased pope described Lawrence as a "manager." Lawrence feels belittled by this job title. He yearns to leave the Vatican and pursue a solitary life of holy contemplation that will guide him through his own spiritual crisis. Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), the camerlengo, delays summoning Lawrence after the pope's death. Lawrence feels slighted by this, as well. He feels that, given his closeness to the pope, he should have been among the first at the great man's deathbed.

Because he is the dean, Lawrence must "manage" the conclave, a task he approaches with full duty but no joy. It is his job to offer an opening homily. At first, he delivers standard material. But then he speaks from the heart. He hopes for a pope who doubts, because "If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith."

Some read this key line as advancing relativism and demeaning the Church. That's a wrong reading. In fact, what Lawrence says in this scene is a central feature of the Christian experience. The Bible tells us that it is impossible for us, as mortals, to understand how much God loves us, how wonderful Heaven will be, and how truly meaningful our lives, including our suffering, is. See, for example, 1 Corinthian 13:12, Luke 12:2-3, 2 Corinthians 12:4, John 20:29, John 16:21. Faith is exactly so important to our growth as spiritual beings because we live in a world where faith seems like nothing but "folly" and a "stumbling block." Through doubt, we grow as Christians.

For this scene, Berger chose special musical accompaniment. Most in the audience will never consciously realize the significance of Berger's choice. He's using choral music that has been played in the Sistine Chapel for hundreds of years. In his discussion of this scene, found here, Berger describes how his handling of his camera, of wide shots, profile shots, and close-ups, serves the drama taking place within Cardinal Lawrence and also within his fellow cardinals as he delivers his homily.

During the conclave, cardinals are housed in a dormitory that is made to look like a prison – this carceral design underlines that the weight of the faith of over a billion Catholics presses on the cardinals' shoulders, as they, in isolation, must make a decision that will have impact for decades to come. This look also arouses compassion and fellow-feeling in the viewer. We might be tempted to think of cardinals as lucky, privileged, wealthy, and powerful men – and no doubt some are. But the Spartan confines of the conclave brings home to us the price they pay for their privilege.

Even in this rigid set, production designer Suzie Davies used light and color to differentiate between the cardinals, and reinforce their characterization. Tremblay, who, we will learn, is a smooth operator, has somehow managed to acquire posher digs than everyone else. Humble Lawrence has perhaps the least posh digs. Suzie Davies praises her colleagues, cinematographer Stephane Fontaine and costume designer Lisy Christl. "Those rooms on their own would have been very dull and airless in the wrong direction, had Stephane not lit them so beautifully, and Lisy dressed those characters in those wonderful costumes."

There are also symbolic touches that enhance the film's depth. Almost completely silent nuns are this movie Vatican's wallpaper. And yet they play a key role in the plot's development. When nuns are the scene's focus, caged birds sing. These singing caged birds convey both limitation and power. After the resolution of a conflict between blind tradition and a benevolent innovation, turtles appear onscreen, and previously silent nuns are suddenly seen laughing and talking.

I love Conclave because it is a movie made by and for grown-ups. As mentioned above, Edward Berger, Conclave's director, directed, co-wrote, and co-produced a 2022 adaptation of Eric Marie Remarque's 1929 World War I novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. That film has been called "very, very impressive, overwhelming, grueling, harrowing" and also, "ambitious, visceral, authoritative," and the "finest First World War film to date." One can get a sense of the power of that film even just from this two-minute trailer. I've respected Berger's seriousness since that film and Conclave, his subsequent effort, does not disappoint.

So often I read a laudatory review of a trending film or miniseries, and after I sample this latest fan favorite and critical darling, I despair. Loud, silly people get worked up about nonsense. Characters are stereotypes, values alienate me, dialogue is insipid, and plot developments defy logic. Not in Conclave. Adults debate an issue that has long vexed Christians – how to handle worldly power in service to an otherworldly ideal.

Power struggles did not begin in the Vatican. Power struggles were an issue when Christ walked the earth. See Mark 10:35-45; two key apostles ask Jesus to be granted power. Power struggles were an issue in the early church. See Paul's letters, and the Acts of the Apostles, and then the councils of 325, 382, 431, 451, 553, 680, and 787. Christians debated whether it was necessary to be circumcised, what food one could eat, the role of women, and the true nature of Christ and God. First Timothy 3:2 says that bishops should be the husband of one wife, and for a thousand years Catholic priests married. Celibacy began to be required for Catholic priests after the First Lateran Council of 1123.

In our own day, Vatican II, of 1962-65, remains a hot topic of debate. In short, neither Harris nor Berger invented the idea of devout Catholics debating differing ways to interpret the Gospel. While I watched Conclave, though I knew it to be fiction, I felt plugged in to debates that I and other Catholics are well aware occur every day among us.

Screenwriter Peter Straughan provides a quote-worthy script. Straughan has been nominated for and won awards for 2011's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and 2015's Wolf Hall. In an interview with Patheos, Straughan is very much not the anti-Catholic hatemonger Conclave's critics depict. "I was brought up Catholic. I’m not a believer now, but it sort of felt like home … [Cardinal Lawrence] says, basically, 'God grant us a pope who doubts' ... I was electrified … That's what I love, that's wonderful … as I get older, I’m much more suspicious of certainty … [Cardinal Lawrence is] almost like a Capra character, this kind of common sense, quiet, ordinary, decent man … This is a hero I can get behind … the most humane place to be is when you’re not certain, when you are prepared still to listen to others."

Indeed, Ralph Fiennes' Cardinal Lawrence is a very flesh-and-blood, humble man who struggles to conduct the conclave "by the book," even when events conspire to force him to break some rules to serve the higher good, and even though he is underestimated by others. Cardinal Lawrence carries the weight of the world on his shoulders – you can practically feel the soreness in his muscles as he soldiers through this tense conclave. You can hear his internal wrestling as a friend betrays him, as he discovers shocking secrets, as he breaks into a forbidden chamber to reveal harsh but necessary truths, and as he confronts a reality that practically turns him inside out.

I felt so much compassion for this fictional character that I wanted to comfort him. I rejoiced with him when he came to understand that the pope's diagnosing him as a "manager" was not a put-down, but a blessing, a way for him to use his particular skills to serve the Church in powerful ways. Yes, Conclave acknowledges, the Church, and indeed all the institutions we rely on, is and are imperfect. But we are blessed if otherwise overlooked heroes like Lawrence – and Sister Agnes – remain true to the best in those institutions. I forgot the otherwise very memorable Fiennes in three of his previous roles, the eponymous English patient, the Nazi Amon Göth of Schindler's List, and the Voldemort of the Harry Potter films. I was totally invested in Cardinal Lawrence, and deeply moved when, at a key moment, he says, "I would choose John," and if you want to know what that poignant line means, you have to see the film.

Contrary to Father Meyer's condemnation of the film as "mocking" Catholicism, Straughan quoted Kant. "From this crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever built." In Straughan's script, Cardinal Bellini says, "We serve an ideal. We can’t be ideal." Straughan feels compassion for all his cardinals, and he says that Harris did, too. "the other thing I liked about the book was that it felt kind ... It wasn’t contemptuous. Nobody was cast out. They were flawed humans, as we are all flawed humans, struggling to be better than themselves. I found that very attractive."

I loved Conclave because each character telegraphed a rich backstory which the film could only hint at in soundbites. I often feel that Stanley Tucci plays the same snarky, supercilious, marginally bad guy in every role, except in The Lovely Bones, where he convincingly played an absolute monster. But Tucci has never been better, and more disciplined, than as Cardinal Bellini, a liberal who feels duty-bound to rescue the church from reactionary forces and open the door wide for women and LGBT people. Bellini progresses from recognizing that he is the favorite to resignation that he is not, from allowing power to, momentarily, corrupt him to betraying his best friend whom he denounces with unseemly insults, to getting a grip on himself and recognizing that, as a Christian, he must repent and remember charity and humility as his north star. He must surrender his plan to save the world, and that's a really hard thing for an idealist to do. We witness how hard it is in Bellini's surrender.

Those who condemn Conclave insist that Cardinal Tedesco is a cliché, a mustache-twirling villain. Not at all. If the filmmakers wanted a one-dimensional Darth Vader they never would have tapped Sergio Castellitto. He's a star in Italy, a handsome, charming, award-winning veteran. In this clip from the 2001 international box office hit Bella Martha / Mostly Martha, Castellitto plays a seductive chef who effortlessly charms a little girl and an adult woman with one dish of pesto pasta. Even senior citizen Castellitto still has it going on. In this clip from 2021's Il Materiale Emotivo / A Bookshop in Paris, graybeard Castellitto radiates an earthy, warm sensuality with his body and expresses thoughtful intelligence with his face.

Castellitto as Tedesco is simply the hottest cardinal. Fiennes and Tucci are stiff in comparison; their physical stiffness reflects their tight-clenched personalities. Castellitto waves his hands and stands contrapposto, shoulders, feet and hips asymmetrical to each other, as if he is torquing up in preparation to blast off. He practically dances. He vapes!

Cardinal Tedesco wants to turn back the clock. Conclave could have depicted Tedesco as a simple-minded reactionary with nothing but specious nostalgia as his motivation. Conclave is too smart, and too fair, for that. It's also simply too well-crafted a work of art. Had Tedesco been a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, he would have served less of a narratological function. Rather, he is smart, and he has reasons for feeling as he does, and the challenge he offers Bellini's certainty is all too real.

In the conclave cafeteria, Lawrence wants to see evidence of a universal church, where barriers of language or culture are evaporated by the transcendent Catholic truth that unites all. Lawrence wants to see cardinals from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas break bread together.

Tedesco will have none of Lawrence's hope. Tedesco points out that the cardinals' cafeteria is as "tribal" as any other venue where inescapable human nature, not transcendent Catholicism, reigns. Tedesco reminds Lawrence, and the viewer, that in the old days, Catholics from any nation were united by a common language, Latin. Discarding Latin meant fragmenting the body of Christ. Lawrence is not given the opportunity to retort, although he does look disgusted.

Later, Muslim terrorists bomb locations in Rome. Tedesco, enraged, denounces relativism and says that jihad is a threat that is currently killing Christians, and has been doing so for centuries. He's right. It is. And more Christian leaders need to state this objective fact without reference to obscuring relativism.

Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), has served in danger zones like Congo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Benitez has done worthy work, for example, setting up a center to care for victims of sexual violence in Congo, a region where rape as a weapon of war has been an epidemic for decades. Benitez says that war is destructive to all, and each human, no matter their ethnicity, is sacred. Each loss is a tragedy. Further, the Church is not a grab bag of traditions. Rather, the Church is what we do next to live up to Christian ideals. Viewers will assess these two cardinals' points of view as they will. This viewer supports the Church that does the good work on the ground that Benitez champions, and also that faces the difficult facts that Tedesco voices.

Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) represents yet another major issue the Church faces today. We have never had a black pope, and, given that we believe our Church to be universal, we want one. The current Pope Francis, from Argentina, is our first pope from the Southern Hemisphere. The fictional Adeyemi, who is Nigerian, embodies the Church's yearning for a leadership that reflects the Church's universality. In Conclave, some want to vote for Adeyemi because his elevation would signal to the growing Catholic Church in Africa that they matter. Problem: Adeyemi, like many Christians in Africa, promotes a homicidal hostility to homosexuals. Muslims in northern Nigeria stone gay people to death. Christians in Africa fear that tolerance extended to gay people will cause them problems with their neighboring Muslims.

Suddenly, a Nigerian nun, Sister Shanumi (Balkissa Souley Maiga) appears. Shanumi has a breakdown while serving food to Adeyemi. Cardinal Lawrence intervenes. Lawrence is aided by Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini). Rossellini is one of many actors in Conclave deserving of an Academy Award. She is given almost nothing to say but she is given everything to do. Her facial expressions are like the secret Vatican archives. They are inaccessible and yet right there in front of you, their mystery open to vast interpretation. "Although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears," she says to Lawrence, when he questions her about why Shanumi freaked out over Adeyemi.

One of the reasons I wish Conclave were a miniseries, and not merely two hours of terrific movie, is because I want each individual character's back story. I want to know how a hot guy like Tedesco keeps his vows, or what torment he went through before breaking them. But I also want more interaction between the characters at odds with each other. I want to watch a debate between bleeding heart Benitez and realpolitik Tedesco. I also want more of the characters who exhibit chemistry with each other. Fiennes, as Lawrence, and Tucci, as Bellini, feel like buddies whose intimacy goes back decades. I may need to go to confession for this, but given their chemistry, I really want to see a movie with Cardinal Lawrence and Sister Agnes come however close to an affair. I'd be happy if they kept it at arm's length, but they play off each other so lusciously, and their characters are so simpatico, that I really need more. Lawrence, the weary, sincere, "manager" who wishes he could be a monk contemplating the numinous, and Sister Agnes, the cynical and yet still devout, ostensibly submissive power-behind-the-throne could awaken new depths in each other, which is, I think, what men and women are supposed to do for each other. None of us is complete without the yin to our yang, and sex is essential to that, biologically and spiritually, and even in chaste relationships that consummate only in all-night conversations like that had in the 1995 road movie Before Sunrise.

In Conclave, Sister Agnes and Cardinal Lawrence discover why Sister Shanumi collapsed. Years before, Cardinal Adeyemi, then a thirty-year-old, had sex with a teenage Shanumi. She gave birth to a child, who was put out for adoption.

My initial response was to feel revulsion for Adeyemi. Veteran British-Tanzanian actor Lucian Msamati perfectly conveys the august presence required of a prince of the church. He carries himself as if he were a golden idol transported on a palanquin held aloft by lesser mortals. And yet beneath his robes, he is an abuser of a vulnerable girl, and, by extension, a scandal to the Church. His abuse endangers others' salvation.

Conclave stood between Adeyemi and my lack of mercy. There is a remarkable scene where Lawrence and Adeyemi meet in Adeyemi's dorm room. Adeyemi says the event occurred decades earlier. He has repented, made amends, and followed the straight and narrow ever since. His child was adopted into a good home. It was a momentary lapse! He'd make a great pope! There is so much riding on this! You can't let Africans down!

Both realize how important it would be to tap an African as pope. But that train has left the station; it is Lawrence's job to make that clear to Adeyemi. They pray together. Adeyemi begins to cry. Not just a sniffle; a sob. He is crushed. He so wanted to serve God and his Church in the way that only he could. Hundreds of millions of black Catholics in Africa and all around the world, as well as white allies, would have rejoiced. It will not happen.

Conclave made me feel something I never thought I would feel. Compassion for a powerful adult man who abused a vulnerable teenage girl.

Only a fool would accept Sister Shanumi's sudden appearance as mere coincidence. Someone wanted Adeyemi out of the running. Someone orchestrated Adeyemi's exposure to enhance his own chances of assuming the ring of the fisherman.

Given the apparently irreconcilable differences between liberal Bellini and conservative Tedesco, the elimination of Adeyemi, and the Hamlet-like hesitation of Lawrence, Cardinal Tremblay increasing appears to be a viable compromise candidate. He doesn't seem to be ideologically driven. He may just be the go-along-to-get-along candidate the Church needs in the midst of heated conversations no one can cool to room temperature. Someone like Tremblay would at least keep the lights on and the HVAC running till someone can produce big answers to big questions that will satisfy liberals and conservatives alike, the developed world and also the Third World. Tremblay is camerlengo, and a couple of previous camerlengos became popes. And Tremblay is Canadian, the most vanilla of countries.

Well, this is a thriller, so we have to discover something shocking about Tremblay, and we do. It was he who conspired to bring Sister Shanumi to the conclave. And there's more. Tremblay is guilty of a sin we don't hear much about – simony. Simony is named after Simon the Sorcerer, and the origin of the term originates in the Biblical Acts of the Apostles. Again, struggles over power go all the way back to the early church. Simon the Sorcerer tried to bribe Peter and John so that they would endow him with spiritual power. Peter is very tough on Simon. "May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God … your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness." Tremblay bribed cardinals to vote for him during the conclave. He promised them better ecclesiastical positions in return.

Again, contrary to those who hate Conclave, I did not hate Tremblay. I have known people in real life who are like all the main characters in Conclave, and I have certainly known plenty of Tremblays. Yes, they break the rules. Yes, they are amoral narcissists for whom the real value of the tradition they represent is not anything they can fully grasp. But they often make okay administrators. As a university professor, I've had bosses like Tremblay. Given that they don't care about the bigger issues, but they do keep the lights on, they let me teach what I wanted to teach and didn't get in my way.

In any case, Tremblay is out of the running. Attention now turns to Benitez. He gave that touchy-feely speech and it made a positive impression. Benitez is elected the new pope. Volker Bertelmann's terrific score could have risen to a crescendo and the final credits could have rolled and I would have been a happy movie-goer and all the conservatives now condemning Conclave would have loved the film. Neither Harris nor Berger were about to end on such that note, though. They had a surprise up their sleeves, a surprise I wish people would actually talk about, in a faithful and collegial way – the Bible counsels such behavior. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell believers to become hysterical and to defame those with whom we disagree.

Cardinal Lawrence has discovered that Cardinal Benitez had to travel to a clinic in Switzerland. Lawrence confronts Benitez. Benitez calmly informs Lawrence that he had to have an appendectomy. That surgery revealed that he had a uterus. Apparently he was born with a DSD – a disorder of sexual development. At birth, he appeared to be a boy. It was only the appendectomy that informed him that his chromosomes are female. He discovered this only after he'd been ordained. Lawrence is aghast. Overwhelmed. He decides that it would be against the rules to overturn the conclave's vote. Benitez is pope.

I can't say often enough that I would have loved Conclave with or without the final twist. Here are my comments on that final twist. I grew up in a coherent Catholic world. I heard church bells throughout the day: six a.m, noon, and 6 pm. Sometimes I would stop what I was doing and pray the Angelus, which begins with words I found hauntingly beautiful: "The angel of the lord declared unto Mary … Let it be done unto me according to thy word."

Church was a five minute walk from my house. Everyone was there. Well, not everyone. We knew and were friends with Protestants and Jews. But the church was packed with a cast of characters I am still in touch with to this day. We went to school together. We were at each other's houses for weddings and funerals. My neighbors parading past me during communion was a people-watching experience. There were whites and non-whites, young and old, people all dressed up and kids in jeans. All devout. All receiving the body of Christ. It took a long time for everyone to make it up to the altar and back to their seats. There were so many of us. As I rode on public buses, if the bus passed a church, some of the passengers would bless themselves.

Now the Catholic school I and all of my siblings attended is closed. My peers' kids are not Catholic. Mass is no longer a vibrant, communal celebration – it's a memento mori. There are fewer and fewer people and most of the heads are festooned with gray hair, if any hair at all. There is also less reverence. People gossip and read their phones.

People aren't any less hungry for spiritual nourishment than they used to be. People are just as willing to sacrifice for the pearl of great price, as they perceive it. The Catholic Church is just not satisfying congregants and congregants are leaving. Something needs to be done.

Our ostensibly celibate priesthood is not protecting the church from erosion. This does not surprise me. I've always loved being Catholic, but not because of priests. In all my years of being Catholic, I can't say I've ever had a rewarding experience with an American Catholic priest.

Those who have met my spiritual and corporeal needs have been women. I was taught by nuns, as have millions of other Catholic kids. Priests never set foot in our classrooms. They were always remote. Recently, before a surgery for what I was told might be terminal cancer, I was ministered to by a New Age woman. After surgery, I was visited by a nun. I asked to see a priest; none arrived. These women were memorable. Women raised up the next generation of Catholics, cleaned the church, collected, counted and recorded donations. Women answered the phone.

The argument is that only celibate men can perform the tasks necessary to keep the Church going. I've never witnessed that. My worst encounter with a priest was at the funeral of my brother. I was burying a beloved young brother who was killed on my birthday. This priest's gauche behavior managed to make that even worse. The priests I've known have struck me as men who are divorced from every day life and who have no idea how to talk to a woman like me, not a wife, not a mother. There's a feeling that you have when you are talking to someone who wants to and is capable of recognizing your full humanity. I have never had anything like that experience while talking to a Catholic priest. If priests were the alpha and omega of the Church, I would not be Catholic. But, again, they aren't.

Catholics who reject the idea of women priests inevitably say that this prohibition is not a rejection of the concept of human equality. Men and women are equal but different, they say. God created men to lead and teach and women to have babies. The Church defies this concept every day. There are men serving as priests who can barely get through a sermon and who have minimal contact with parishioners, and women who are excellent teachers and leaders and who never had kids. Lots of nuns fit this description.

I fully acknowledge that men, as a group, are often better than women at lots of things, from being a firefighter or combat soldier to advanced mathematics. But, in my experience, men are not better at being priests.

There are very good reasons from both the Bible and from Church tradition for women in leadership positions. I haven't read everything Marg Mowczko has written on these topics, but what I've read from her makes sense to me. You can read her work here. And there's another thing to consider. Women were ordained in Czechoslovakia under Stalinism. Communist suppression of Catholicism necessitated women priests..

The demand that priests be celibate is shaky. I used to room with a Polish-American woman who grew up in such a remote region of Minnesota that she heard wolves in the morning when milking the cows. That would have been back in the 1950s. Her immigrant parents warned her, "Never be alone in a room with a priest." A priest made a pass at me at a party in Asia. I was in my mid-twenties, so I wasn't traumatized, but it was not pleasant. In Africa I encountered priests who bragged of their "femmes africaines." In a tiny village in Eastern Europe my cousin pointed out to me that the local priest was living with a woman who appeared very much not to be a "sister" as she was introduced.

My mother was born after my grandfather left their village in Slovakia. My grandmother, a brilliant woman but a poor peasant, cleaned for the local priest. When we visited decades after my mother left, villagers told us that everyone assumed that my mother was the daughter of the priest. Back in America, my mother showed me a love letter the priest had written to my grandmother after she left. I have no way of knowing if my grandfather was a shepherd in the Old Country and a coal miner in this one, or a village priest in Slovakia.

Ben Shapiro may not know this, but we devout Catholics have been talking about these issues not just all our lives, but for centuries. European folklore is replete with such stories. Desiderius Erasmus (1466 – 1536) is one of the most famous, productive, and honored Catholic priests of all time. Erasmus wrote that we Catholics "often fall into the hands of priests who, under the pretense of confession, commit acts which are not fit to be mentioned." Folklore surrounding a legendary woman pope, Pope Joan, has circulated since 1250. Women in the Church have long celebrated being liberated by Christ, but bemoaned suppression by those acting in Christ's name. See, for example, The Acts of Paul and Thecla, a Christian feminist novel from the second century; Catherine of Siena (1347 – 1380) who played power politics in Renaissance Italy; Teresa of Avila (1515 – 1582) a reformer who had to fend off the Spanish Inquisition. Sor Juana de la Cruz (1651 – 1695) was an intellectual in colonial Mexico. A bishop forced her to conduct a self-criticism session and surrender her library of 4,000 books. See also Mother Theodore Guerin (1798 – 1856), a French-born American saint. Her bishop locked her in a closet when she refused to submit to him.

Further, Catholics have been talking about the pluses and minuses of conclaves for centuries. There's a very juicy article entitled "Conclave Hits Theaters. What Really Happens When a New Pope Is Elected?" in the October 25, 2024 edition of America, The Jesuit Review. Author Christopher Bellitto details the changing nature of conclaves over the centuries, the pomp, the pageantry, and the shenanigans accompanying them. Bellitto's article is not "anti-Catholic" or "progressive." It's very Catholic and it reports known facts. Facts that won't shatter any true Catholic's faith to discover.

However you feel about church sex scandals, priestly celibacy, and all-male clergy, the simple fact is that Catholics have been discussing and creating art based on these matters for centuries. My Church is strong enough and true enough to address all of these matters. Art is a fine way to prompt discussion. For all these reasons, this devout Catholic loves Conclave.

Danusha V. Goska est auctor God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.