Ralph Fiennes talks about papal thriller ‘Conclave,’ women’s ordination

This article contains spoilers for the film.

(RNS) — Despite constant buzz about Pope Francis’ age and health, the only conclave — the gathering of the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals to elect a new pontiff — on the horizon is in theaters: A cinematic flocking of red-hatted, red-robed princes of the church portrayed in a star-studded thriller in theaters Oct. 25.

“Conclave,” Robert Harris’ 2016 novel, dramatizes the Catholic process for choosing a new supreme leader in a film that has already won top prizes at multiple film festivals and seems well positioned for awards show season. 

Despite the barrage of the improbable, telenovela-worthy plot twists, the film’s tone is serious, with artistic shots of the cardinals and the Vatican and a string-heavy score backing theological discussions about doubt and power.

Director Edward Berger, who comes to “Conclave” after winning an Oscar for 2022’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” told RNS he was drawn to the world of Harris’ novel both because of its “theatricality,” as well as the avenue it takes to explore what happens in an “institution where a top job is empty.”

While Berger was raised Protestant, he remembers visiting a friend’s Catholic church and being curious “because I thought it was so much more interesting than my service where I went, because of the theatricality, in a way, and all the rituals.”

But he also remembers being a little frightened by those rituals. The director explained, “They intimidated me because I always thought I would do something wrong.”

Ralph Fiennes, who stars as Cardinal Lawrence, the dean of the College of Cardinals, said the “human questions” are what he loves about the film.

“The church is peopled by human beings, and it’s interesting to reflect on their motivation,” said Fiennes, best known most recently for a lead role in “The Menu” and for playing the arch-villain Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies.

“I thought this script did not seek to satirize or somehow cynically exploit the Catholic church,” he told RNS. “I thought it was a very human look at a particular aspect of the Catholic Church, which is huge and complex.” 

He also explained that those making the film had done their best to be “accurate to the details of ritual” with a religious adviser on set. “I hope at a physical, practical level, it’s accurate. I’m sure there’ll be people to tell us where we did things wrong, but that was the aspiration anyway,” he said.

Fiennes, who was raised Catholic but now describes himself as “lapsed,” said he still has “a very keen interest in what it is to have a spiritual guide or sense of a path” and described the Catholic church as “an object of great interest” to him.

“There’s much in the Catholic teachings and rules that I find very resistible, but the teachings of Christ are always, I think, going to have relevance,” Fiennes said, explaining that “all kinds of spiritual teachings” interest him.

Fiennes described a few negative experiences with the church. When he was young, “certainly in schools in Ireland, the sort of discipline was ferocious, with priests taking sticks out of their robes to hit young boys over the hand,” the actor said.

In his youth, he also encountered “elitist priests who insisted on saying the Mass in Latin when it might be good to say it in English to encourage a younger congregation,” but nevertheless Fiennes emphasizes that “these were all human beings.”

“I’ve talked to priests whose intellectual viewpoint and wisdom I really respect,” Fiennes said.

“Conclave” has already drawn the ire of Catholic conservatives because of a final revelation about the newly elected pope.

After a scandal-riddled conclave, at which several factions of cardinals describe themselves as “at war” over ideological divisions that more closely mirror European and U.S. political debates than those in the Vatican today, the cardinals elect Cardinal Benitez, whose status had been under wraps until the conclave in order to keep him safe as he led the church in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Benitez stays out of the fray of the cardinals’ bickering and subversion of each other and instead demonstrates a humble leadership style. But there is something else that sets him apart from his cardinal brothers. At the movie’s final twist, Lawrence learns after Benitez’s election that the new pope had recently discovered he is intersex — a person whose anatomy fits into neither male nor female sex categories. 

Most of the conservatives enraged by the movie seem to misunderstand the condition. “In reality, the cardinal they elected was born a woman and raised as a male by her parents because she was born with an intersex condition,” Jonah McKeown, a staff writer at the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency, writes, before interviewing a priest about why women cannot be ordained.

In his interview with RNS, Berger seemed to recognized that Benitez’s revelation would touch a nerve in today’s church. He recounted a story Harris told him about a cardinal who had written the author after the book was published to tell him that, while he enjoyed the novel, when it came to the ending he told himself “it is ultimately just a story.”

For Fiennes, it is not Benitez who raises the question of women’s ordination, but Sister Agnes, played by Isabella Rossellini, who is the only female star in the film, reflecting the lack of women leading the church.

“It does seem odd that the church sticks so forcefully to its tradition of male celebrants. I think the Church of England has proven that (having) women as priests is very effective,” Fiennes said, adding he didn’t “feel comfortable making pronouncements on the church” because he’s “too ignorant.”

“I know lots of Catholic women who would be curious to know what the future might be,” said Fiennes.

Berger said that, while his opinion was subjective, “I do think the movie explores a wonderful topic of femininity versus masculinity that is perhaps an interesting dialogue that could be the future of any religious organization, not just a Catholic one.”

Ultimately, Fiennes said, “What I like about the script is that I think it takes seriously the notion of who is the right person to be pope, who has the right spiritual integrity to hold that position.” He continued, “And what I love about it is that I feel we do have someone at the end of the film who has a profound spiritual essence to lead the church.”