Spoilers for Conclave (2024)

The Christian religion is known for being one of the major contributors to homophobia, hundreds of years sculpting tenets with one core idea being “gays are bad, they’re going to hell” for many believers. Though there are many denominations of Christian, some with the tendency to be more homophobic than others, I’ll be coming from a Roman Catholic perspective with this article, which is also the setting for the film Conclave.

In October of 2024, Conclave hit theaters across the world, giving audiences a peek behind the curtain of what goes on during the process of electing a new pope–the leader of the Catholic Church. A highly secretive procedure, the film offers an idea about what politicking and conspiracies may go on during the process. Throughout the film, the main storyline follows Thomas Lawrence, Dean of the College of Cardinals, and his experience dealing with his fellow cardinals and the election. Stick a hundred men together in very close quarters, ideas of secret forbidden romance are bound to come up among audiences, but Conclave varies from other Catholic media that’s come before it with the introduction of an actual, explicit, inarguably queer character.

Vincent Benitez, played by actor Carlos Diehz in his silver screen debut, arrives to the conclave as an unknown cardinal, officiated via a secretive process due to his missionary work in unsafe areas. A small role that eventually blossoms into a very important character at the end of the film, Benitez is our aforementioned queer character. 

Following a speech praising the diversity of the church and her ability to grow and change and accept new things with changing times saying, “La iglesia no es la tradición. The Church is not Tradition. La iglesia no es el pasado. The Church is not the past. La iglesia es lo que hagamos en adelante. The Church is what we do next,” Benitez is elected pope. The Dean hears word of the pope-to-be having had an appointment at a clinic in Geneva, Switzerland for “gender reassignment” the year prior, a procedure the aforementioned pope describes as a “laparoscopic hysterectomy,” and when pressed about it, Benitez answers that he hadn’t gone through with the operation after all. He shares this as being a good thing, because, “I know what it is to live between the world’s certainties.” Earlier in the film, Dean Lawrence had condemned the idea of being comfortable in the way things are presently, and that nothing good comes from it. He goes as far as to describe it as deadly, and an enemy of the church.

In real life, I think Dean Lawrence’s homily rings very true. He says, “St. Paul said that God’s gift to the Church is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views that gives our Church its strength,” and reminds me most notably of the severe lack of tolerance present in our own country. Whether it be about the poor, people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ community (as I’m focusing on today), or just the generally disenfranchised by society, the United States is guilty of being horribly certain in its unwavering beliefs. The idea, “you are not like me, therefore you are bad,” is an idea that has plagued the minds of every human to ever have walked the earth. Perhaps it’s some evolutionary response to reject differences out of fear 200,000 years ago that some other humanoid species would kill us, but regardless of how helpful it may have been then, it’s a deadly idea to perpetuate today.

I am lucky enough to have grown up here in South Bend in a relatively liberal church. It may not be the case for everyone who attended, but I personally cannot recall a time I ever felt the priests or leaders around me were belittling or homophobic. While this is the case, my experience with family and other community members does not reflect this. The self righteous attitudes of those supposed “Christians” gives a taste of what Benitez describes when discussing his shame surrounding his intersex body in the Room of Tears with Dean Lawrence. While it’s not a sensation I can recall personally having felt, I know many other individuals like myself who are queer, specifically gender diverse, and who grew up in the church, can.

I think Conclave is a beautiful film that came at a very good time. While the global playing field brings more progressive popes (real ones, not film versions) than ever before, on our home front that progressive nature does not ring true. Transphobia is a vicious disease that seems to run rampant among the leaders in this country, seeping into the general population via “news sources” like FOX News, through political leaders spouting blatant misinformation and unprofessionalism and through the church. I have family members that lean conservative in their politics whom I showed the movie to, and though I’m positive it didn’t mean as much to them as it did to me, I hope they were able to take real meaning from it and see things more aligned with my perspective for a change.