The Next Pope, as Seen Through a Left-Wing Fever Dream

But in the world of the film Conclave, this timid remnant of conservative cardinals is an overwhelming force that threatens to return the Church to an earlier era of traditional doctrine, devotion, and liturgy. “We must never return to the Latin liturgy,” the left-wing cardinal Bellini vows. “That was an ugly and repressive time,” he says, in which all Catholic wives were “oppressed” by traditional gender roles “and birthed 10 children.” When he becomes pope, “women should play a role in the Curia,” the Church’s governing body.