Friends were discussing the brilliant new film Conclave this week, and said they were surprised at
how political electing a new pope is. I was surprised at their surprise.
One could argue, as I do, that any large-scale human interaction tends to involve politics โ in the
sense of trying to influence, manoeuvre, persuade and manipulate. That applies to a suburban football club as much as it does the United Nations.
And while one might think religion should seek to avoid internal politics because of the subjectโs
moral import, in fact it is especially intense there precisely because people think it is so important.
Just look at the New Testament: why are the religious leaders so angry with Jesus and seeking to kill
him? Because he is a threat to their authority โ politics!
Our columnist Barney Zwartz twice covered papal conclaves in Rome โ and reckons the film Conclave nails it.
And no religious institution is more intensely political than the Catholic Church, both because of its
structure and its breadth. It doesnโt always do it well, as victims of the Inquisition would attest.
Conclaves are all about politics, despite the insistence of the Church that the Holy Spirit oversees the result. When I was religion editor of this august masthead, I went to Rome to cover two conclaves: the 2005 one that elected Pope Benedict XVI and the 2013 one that elected the current pope, Francis.
It was utterly fascinating. The eternal cityโs population swells by about a million curious or
passionate Catholics, hundreds of thousands of whom gather in St Peterโs Square to see what colour
smoke will emerge from the Sistine Chapel.
Once a conclave begins the cardinal electors are supposed to be completely silent during
proceedings (and thereafter), but Italian journalists had a huge advantage because many of their
cardinals leaked like sieves. In contrast, Australia had only one elector, the late Cardinal George Pell,
who probably didnโt speak to anyone but certainly not to The Age.
But he was known to have played a large role as a โcampaign managerโ for the deeply conservative
Joseph Ratzinger (who won on the fourth ballot to become Benedict VXI) and was also a significant
figure in 2013.
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