Papal Attraction

In which I am briefly fascinated by conclaves.

I said I would write this Substack every fortnight, but forgive me, readers, it has been four weeks since I last posted. Since then the old pope has died and a new pope has been installed in his place. The old one was called Pope Francis and the new one was called Bob Prevost but is now called Pope Leo XIV. I cannot stop thinking of him as Pope Charli XCX.

For the first time in my lifetime, when the old pope died there was a great flurry of excitement in the media about the selection of a new pope. Or was it just the first time I noticed? Am I now of an age where I am interested in things like new popes? It seems unlikely. I am not Catholic, nor any other religion. Have people always cared so much about who gets to be the pope? Is it just because of the movie Conclave that came out this year? In fact, it was released for streaming the very day after il Papa went to baby Jesus. (Coincidence? Who can say? All I know is if I was releasing a movie about something that only happens two or three times a century I might be inclined to slip someone in Rome a little sweetener to, you know, make that coincidence actually coincide at a very convenient time. Was a very special Beef Wellington involved?)

The day after Pope Francis’ death, over breakfast, I read aloud to my dad and son a long article from the newspaper about how a new pope is selected. My son, Garnet, is twelve and like me has ADHD. My father is 78 and like me until three years ago, has not been diagnosed with ADHD. We all enjoy falling down internet rabbit holes of research about random topics with some regularity.

We learned that the new pope is selected at a conclave, a gathering where the wannabe popes vote for pope over and over until someone gets a majority. All the cardinals in the world who are under eighty years old stare up at Michelangelo’s graphic novel of the Bible on the ceiling and think about what’s on their pope wishlist and how that does or doesn’t fit with all their colleagues. I imagine a lot of the time they are thinking about how many times they can vote for themselves without committing the sin of pride. If it takes more than a day, they remain sequestered from the outside world until the decision is made. It’s got the same vibes as when the teacher won’t let the class out for recess until someone takes the blame for drawing a cock and balls on the board. Except the opposite.

Garnet and I were particularly interested because in January we were in Rome and visited the Sistine Chapel, which is where So You Wanna Be Pope takes place. We marvelled that the longest conclave in history went for thirty-three months. Nearly three years. I could not imagine how, until I read that the conclave in question took place somewhere else because the Sistine Chapel wasn’t built for another two hundred years. We were in the Sistine Chapel for all of twenty minutes and nearly expired from the heat. It was midwinter, but it felt like July, in the centre of the earth. I had to leave because after staring up with intense envy at Michelangel’s depiction of the Creation of Adam, in which Adam -- the lucky duck -- got to be in the nude, I had taken off all the layers I could that wouldn’t lead to my arrest.

Drew, on the other hand, seemed absolutely fine. He is the only member of our immediate family who was baptised into the Catholic Church though, so I guess that makes sense. Heathens feel the hellfires more and also have to go to public or independent schools. He stayed on for a fair bit longer, and was driven out not by heat but by concern that he might find the kids and me expired on the floor outside, being readied for burial beyond the Vatican walls.

So the long, long conclave that started in 1268 and ended in 1271 went that long because the cardinals at the time were horrendously disagreeable. Even after the magistrates stopped feeding them anything except bread and water, and even after they took the roof off the palace where the conclave was taking place, those stubborn cardinals lasted another entire year. I am deeply impressed by that. I possess no view that I would hold onto if it meant even skipping lunch.

I watched the movie Conclave, and I thought it was not bad. I mean, I’ll watch anything with Ralph Fiennes or Stanley Tucci, and this has both. It has some very good, quite modern plot twists, and though they did seem to try to give Isabella Rossellini something to do, they failed because it’s a movie about cardinals electing a pope, and there’s not a lot of girl power involved.

It doesn’t seem like the actual conclave this year was anywhere near as exciting as the 1268-71 one, or the one in the movie. It took two days and then there was a new pope, who looks rather like all the other popes have looked. He holds slightly less retrograde views than some cardinals on some important social issues (like immigration) and more retrograde views on others (like LGBTQIA+ rights). He appears to have done the requisite amount of shuffling abusive clergy around like a magician with three cups and a ball.

My brief fascination with all things papal has waned now. There’s too much about this man online. Someone on Tiktok posted a reaction video to her telling her mum that Bob Prevost was now the pope. Apparently her mum had hooked up with him when she was 19, before he was a priest. Popes, in my opinion, should not have pasts like this. He also likes tennis, which is an unseemly sport for a pope. Of all the racket sports, only badminton seems appropriate for a pope. Appopriate, if you will. The little shuttlecock looks like an angel, and if you play it outside in the wind you have no control whatsoever over the outcome. This is my final word on the subject.