Contains spoilers, including reference to ending.
Recently I attended a seminar where the speaker, a trans activist, declared that ‘culture eats politics.’ Now, she did admit she was misquoting a famous management strategy maxim: ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast,’ thus using it out of context, but it has been banging round my head ever since. ‘Culture eats politics’ sums up Conclave. It sums up a lot of things. As we know, the liberal elite very much have the culture and its stranglehold appears to be getting tighter. Conclave, in addressing the Western culture war, comes down very firmly on the right side of history and serves as a reminder to dissenters that we’re on the naughty step.
I did enjoy watching it though. Great acting from all, in particular John Lithgow, and tense at times, even if the ridiculous build up and ending pricks our suspension of belief.
In summary, Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) is responsible for running the conclave, and firmly on the side of the liberals/reformers and sets out to thwart those cardinals who want to keep to tradition. For example, Cardinal Adeyemi, an African bishop, is the frontrunner. But Adeyemi, despite his merit of being black, is a ‘homophobe’ and we can’t have that, can we? No references to canonical or biblical law needed at any time for these cardinals. Lawrence and his gang are just intent on making sure that a woke bro gets it, come what may. Which is all fair enough. It’s just a silly thriller after all, which it does rather well. And it’s not like it’s the only film ever to have an utterly ridiculous ending.
The big plot twist
(Look away now if you need to.)
About halfway through I had an epiphany of what the end twist would be. And it was that. Namely, the person chosen to be the next pope was really a woman. Well, not really. It is very hurriedly explained that the individual has both sets of gonads (developmentally impossible in mammalian species) and thus we end up with the next Primate being a man with a fanny. He was going to get a hysterectomy but then he realised he was complete as he was.
Thus not a ‘trans man’ per se but an ‘intersex’ one. Quite how the Church would hide such a scandal is not touched upon but if you took things through to Conclave Part Deux, surely the truth would not be containable and thus we would have the destruction of the church that queer theorists seek? It’s quite the message.
Though Pope Francis did recently invite about 120 trans-identified males for lunch, so perhaps Conclave is more prophetic than we’re prepared to admit …
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The Lies They Tell 
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