Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini
OUR RATING: ★★★★☆
Story: Thriller directed by Edward Berger and written by Peter Straughan. Conclave (2024) follows one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events, selecting a new Pope. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with running this covert process after the unexpected death of the beloved Pope. Once the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders have gathered from around the world and are locked together in the Vatican halls, Lawrence finds himself at the center of a conspiracy and discovers a secret that could shake the very foundation of The Church.
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Top Thought-Provoking Conclave Quotes
Tremblay: The throne of the Holy See is vacant.
Adeyemi: [to Lawrence] The Papacy is a huge burden, especially for an older man. Well, Dean, it seems the responsibility for the Conclave falls upon you.
Bellini: No sane man would want the Papacy.
Lawrence: [referring to the Pope] He refused my resignation. Said some were chosen to be shepherds and some to manage the farm. Apparently I am a manager.
Lawrence: The Pope had doubts about God?
Bellini: No. Never about God. What he had lost faith in was the church.
Bellini: Why do I feel like a cow being priced by the farmer?
Wozniak: [referring to the Papacy] The men who are dangerous are the ones who do want it.
Lawrence: To work together, and to grow together, we must be tolerant. No one person or faction seeking to dominate another.
Lawrence: There is one sin, which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.
Lawrence: Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.
Lawrence: Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness, and who carries on.
Lawrence: I’ve been experiencing difficulties.
Benitez: With your faith?
Lawrence: Prayer. I only mention it to illustrate my point that I’m in no way worthy to be Pope.
Lawrence: Defeat? This is a Conclave, Aldo, it’s not a war.
Bellini: It is a war! And you have to commit to a side. Save your precious doubts for your prayers.
Bellini: Every cardinal has that desire. Every cardinal deep down has already chosen the name by which he would like his Papacy to be known.
Lawrence: Well, I haven’t.
Bellini: Deny it if you like, but search your heart, and then tell me it isn’t so.
Lawrence: I’m not a witch-finder. It’s not my job to go hunting for secrets in my colleagues pasts. Forgive me. Please, no more investigations. I think we’ve heard enough secrets. Let God’s will be done.
Lawrence: I feel as if I’m at some American political convention.
Lawrence: Is this what we’re reduced to, considering the least worst option?
Wozniak: We will never find a candidate who doesn’t have any kind of black mark against them. We’re mortal men. We serve an ideal. We cannot always be ideal.
Benitez: I’m sorry, but I cannot vote for a man unless I deem him the most worthy to be Pope. And for me, that is not Tremblay. It’s you.
Lawrence: I don’t want your vote!
Benitez: Nevertheless, you have it.
Lawrence: When I tried to resign as Dean, he wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t understand why at the time, but now I think I do. I think the Holy Father knew he was dying, and for some reason he wanted me to run this Conclave. Which is what I’m trying to do. For him.
Bellini: I could never become Pope in these circumstances. A stolen document. The smearing of a brother cardinal. I’d be the Richard Nixon of Popes.
Lawrence: Five times I cast my vote for you, Aldo. But I was wrong. You lack the courage required to be Pope.
Sister Agnes: Although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears.
Bellini: It’s shameful to be this age and still not know yourself. Ambition, The moth of holiness.
Benitez: [in Spanish] The thing you’re fighting is here, inside each and every one of us. If we give in to hate now, if we speak of “sides” instead of speaking for every man and woman.
Benitez: [in Spanish] Forgive me, but these last few days we have shown ourselves to be small petty men, we have seemed concerned only with ourselves, with Rome, with these elections, with power. But things are not the Church. The Church is not tradition. The Church is not the past. The Church is what we do next.
Benitez: I was who I had always been. It seemed to me more of a sin to change His handiwork than to leave my body as it was.
Benitez: [to Lawrence] I am what God made me. And perhaps it is my difference that will make me more useful. I think again of your sermon. I know what it is to exist between the world’s certainties.