The film Conclave (2024), directed by Swiss filmmaker Edward Berger and nominated for eight Oscars, depicts a “secret” Church with atheist, libertine, and homosexual cardinals who must elect the next pope after the death of the predecessor, a liberal Catholic with the highly improbable name of Gregory XVII. The race for the papacy addresses many themes that are not exclusive to the progressive fantasies of the director but are indeed topics that keep the pre-conclave debate alive: female ordinations, the end of clerical celibacy and the overcoming of male-female dichotomy, the queer agenda, and transgenderism ideology. The film ends with the revelation of the intersexual identity of the newly elected Pope, who is forced to undergo a surgical removal of the uterus. What an unexpected twist. Here we are beyond the feminist dream of Pope Joan; we have directly Pope Androgynous.
The film is unsettling because, by exaggerating reality, it describes (and normalizes) the dreams of a now not-so-insignificant portion of the contemporary Catholic clergy, which is preparing—this time for real—for the election of Francis’s successor. The last twelve years of the pontificate have been characterized by an agenda radically opposed to traditional Catholic values.
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