What Did Conclave Know?

Was that a puff of pink smoke from the Sistine Chapel? Because the conclave drama is already starting. Cardinal Angelo Becciu will no longer be voting in the upcoming election for the new pope, the New York Times reported, after being shown a letter Pope Francis wrote before his death requesting Becciu not participate. And if that sounds familiar, that’s because something pretty similar happens in the 2024 drama Conclave, the reason you’re probably invested in all this in the first place. In the film, Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence finds a letter from the late pope asking John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay to resign over corruption, ending Tremblay’s papal candidacy.

Now, the Italian Becciu was never seen as a candidate in this conclave like Tremblay, but, as a close adviser to Pope Francis, he was once a front-runner for pope. Then, in 2020, Francis requested Becciu resign his responsibilities as cardinal over alleged embezzlement related to a church real-estate investment in London. He was indicted in Vatican court in 2021 and found guilty in 2023. But Becciu said he was “the victim of a conspiracy” and plans to appeal the ruling. So he showed up to the pre-conclave proceedings earlier this week, claiming the pope never formally stripped him of his right to vote. (A surprise cardinal at the conclave? Once again, Conclave had it first.)

Becciu only changed his tune after being shown a March 24 letter from Pope Francis, written after he left the hospital, per the Italian newspaper Domani. And he was even shown the letter by Cardinal Pietro Parolin — the Cardinal Lawrence of the real-life conclave, as the Vatican’s secretary of state and a papal front-runner himself. (We know, Cardinal Lawrence was actually dean of the college of cardinals, but the real-life dean, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, is too old to participate in the conclave at 91. He was reportedly in the meeting, too, though.) “I have decided to obey the will of Pope Francis, as I have always done, and not enter the conclave despite remaining convinced of my innocence,” Cardinal Becciu said on April 29.

Will Pope Francis’s letter about Becciu shake up the conclave as much as it did in Conclave? As of now, Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reportedly has Parolin as the vote leader with 50, which is still short of the 90-vote majority needed to secure the papacy. But there is, of course, a strong conservative challenge brewing from Péter Erdő, a Hungarian cardinal, whom Il Messaggero puts around 25 votes. (We don’t even need to tell you he’s the Tedesco here.) Mario Grech, a Maltese cardinal and Bellini-esque liberal, also reportedly clocks in around 30. All we need now is a secret cardinal showing up from the Middle East, and we can get this show on the road!

• [the times]

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