Catholic media loved the film

Avvenire, which hews to the Vatican establishment line, praised the film for its sumptuous beauty, twists of plot and “anything but trivial” commentary about the current state of the church.

“Let’s face it: ‘Conclave,’ which takes us to the heart of one of the world’s most mysterious and secret events, is a highly entertaining film, especially for an American audience that isn’t terribly picky,” Avvenire said Dec. 20, when the film opened in Italian theaters and well before Francis got sick.

Writing in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on Feb. 1, critic Alessandra Comazzi highlighted the short but critical turn played by Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes.

As a longtime critic for the La Stampa daily, Comazzi is well aware of the Vatican taboo of openly talking of a conclave. But in an interview, she said the film managed to treat a conclave as thriller without causing offense. She said the Vatican newspaper was only too happy to publish her rave.

“The dean Lawrence has to govern the conclave and liberate it from these false prophets,” she said. “And I think also from the ecclesial and religious point of view, the director managed to do it in a very respectful way.”

But a cardinal close to Francis didn’t

That said, someone who has actually participated in a conclave gave the film something of a thumbs down.

“My experience of being in at least one conclave was not that it was some sort of scene of political backroom plotting of how to get your candidate elected,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the retired archbishop of Boston, wrote in a Feb. 7 blog post.

O’Malley voted in the 2013 conclave that elected Francis pope and is one of his closest allies. He said he and his brother cardinals were well aware that millions of Catholics were praying from afar “so that the Holy Spirit would guide us in our deliberations.”

“And, of course, at the moment when each cardinal votes, you take your ballot, stand in front of Michelangelo’s image of Christ in the ‘Last Judgment’ and swear before God that you are going to vote for the person that you believe is God’s will for the church,” he wrote.

“It’s a much different experience than what they depicted in the movie,” he wrote. “For all its artistic and entertainment value, I don’t think the movie is a good portrayal of the spiritual reality of what a conclave is.”

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