A couple weeks ago, on a flight, I watched the movie Conclave (2024) which is about the process of selecting the Pope, in a modern context. I thought it was surprisingly good, but felt like a warning call for the next papal conclave as it illustrated how the power some of these individuals face can corrupt. Fascinating to think how this process would have played out in 16th Century Italy.
When they say “reduced by lot” then mean by a lottery? By that same original boy or something else?
They also talked about needing approval from electors, I assume that was from the previous small pool. Can’t exactly determine who they mean.
They just wanted a member of the Aristocrat to be in charge is the point. An inauguration validated with whatever appears like merit (but the whole thing is rigged since only one type can ever win - the aristocrat (the entire pool is aristocrats)).
Self selected group :)
Have fun with Doge.
It’s the first time I’ve encountered any information about how a new pope is selected. Period.
As a not-dumb person, I realize it’s just a movie. But the basic premise of being cordoned off from the outside world, voting until someone is chosen, with the voting going on for days and signaled through smoke by burning the ballets - I assume that basic premise is at least mostly accurate?
Edit: Indeed, after some basic googling, the premise of the movie seems to line up with the basic premise of how a pope was selected centuries ago.
It's not really a secret how a pope is chosen, it's just not something most people are interested enough to look up (there's a missing "in" in that sentence but I couldn't decide where to put it).
Robert Harris wrote the book and also wrote Fatherland, Enigma and Pompeii. Those are three different books but I'd definitely read a book with that single title.
Some might even say the film lacks courage, both by taking no stance on the issue and by presenting a scenario that only vaguely matches the hot-button American political issue.
In some ways this is new, but it’s also possibly a reversion to the mean on how it’s worked historically? One difference is that in the 16th century, the impact of the Pope on day to day life was higher (at least in Catholic Europe).
Starting in the 18th century the Papal States began to be chipped away by European powers, and this culminated in Pope Pius IX losing all control political control of the Papal States in 1870 to the Kingdom of Italy. Since then the papacy's temporal power has been limited to the Vatican City, along with the moral weight of the position.
Not so. The mass media have instantly made every sneeze of the pope common knowledge, or common fake news. In prior centuries, the pope's prominence in the consciousness of daily life was low. He was a remote figure. You wouldn't hear of his death for weeks.
I’m not Catholic, but I do think that it makes sense for the next pope to be one.
It's a big deal x)