Pope Crave Won the Conclave

ABLUpdated 6 hours Ago6 Mins read0

Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images

When the white smoke billowed out from a chimney on May 8, announcing that the papal conclave had chosen a new pope, the first account that many saw trumpet the news on X was Pope Crave, a parody account that has been relentlessly covering the ins and outs of the process. At the big moment, Pope Crave beat the Vatican News, the BBC, and CNN by minutes — hours, in social-media time. Pope Crave has become social media’s favorite Catholic news source in the two and a half weeks since Pope Francis’s death, endorsing a candidate (Luis Antonio Tagle, the popular Filipino who didn’t end up winning), and, in the hours after Pope Leo XIV was named, releasing a statement regarding his anti-LGBTQ statements, telling queer Catholics, “You are loved and belong here.” Quickly, Pope Crave has become as reliable as CNN and, when it comes to the movie Conclave, even more so than Politico Europe, an outlet they recently fact-checked.

Run by Susan Bin, who studied art history at Harvard, and Noellia Cabellero (a pseudonym), a lawyer who works in queer Catholic ministry, Pope Crave began in December as an Oscars-season fan account for the Edward Berger film. Bin and Cabellero used it to promote a charity zine in support of Intersex Human Rights Fund, Freedom Fund, and Librarians and Archivists with Palestine. In the wake of Francis’s death, however, the account pivoted from Conclave to “conclave,” becoming a beloved online character in the process. And once the conclave began, Pope Crave was both posting memes and reporting live from the Vatican, through fans on the ground who reached out to the account on X.

Just hours after the Curia selected Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago as the first American Pope, Bin hopped on a call with Vulture to discuss the account, Pope Leo XIV, and memeing Catholicism. “Making a zine, making a movie like Conclave, or making a meme is political in times of fascism — it’s super fucking political,” Bin says. “Cobbling together a community to go watch a fucking chimney because of a movie is political.”

Where were you when you saw the white smoke?
I’m in Dallas right now. I am not the person in Rome, unfortunately, but maybe the next conclave. I had insider information that a decision would be made by the end of the day. So, we had our memes ready. I had all the different monitors pulled up. I was expecting it. I was like, I need to beat the BBC. I need to beat the mainstream media. And then I was like, Thank God, I can finally sleep. I don’t have to wake up at 3:00 a.m. anymore.

Noellia and I were fighting for our lives today. She’s a Catholic and in queer ministry and has a way more prestigious background than me. I’m just here to meme, shitpost, and make art. We’re very serious people doing unserious things.

What was your reaction when you heard it was Pope Leo XIV?
I knew his epithet: He’s the least American American. Noellia knew more than me because she is the actual expert who is in group chats with cardinals. I am not. I try to know enough. The first impression was, he’s an American, which has a lot of baggage if you’re an American Catholic. But then you find out that he hasn’t spent most of his time in the U.S., which makes the Chicago memes funny because I’m like, He’s really not ours, but okay. He’s been in Peru! As soon as he was announced, Noellia voice-called me and was like, “Okay, here are the bullet points, this is what we know about him. This is what streets are saying.” There’s a lot of things we don’t know that we’re going to find out throughout his papacy, and that was true of Francis, that was true of John Paul II. I won’t speak on Joseph Alois Ratzinger because I have opinions about him.

The first tweet that did make me laugh was someone saying, “Wow, J.D. Vance is such a bad Catholic that Curia elected an American pope.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s a statement.”

What is his persona from a meme perspective? Who is he to online audiences?
He’s been pope for what, two hours?

You’re making memes about him.
I wish I could give you someone from Conclave (2024) to compare him to … For now he’s the American. We’re just going to be making American memes and Chicago memes. He was beefing with J.D. Vance, we like to see that. He was on Snoopy Twitter.

Snoopy Twitter?
Snoopy humor memes are what he was retweeting. You know, in the script, John Lithgow’s character is super online. He has a Twitter and he talks about trending hashtags. That’s not what Leo is like, but there is a novelty to having popes on Twitter.

People are calling him Woke Pope.
I wish! We’ll cyberbully him into being woke. We love a woke pope.

The Pope Crave account made a really serious post about Pope Leo XIV and LGBTQ rights. How do you balance shitposting and spreading awareness?
We are a Conclave zine and meme account, and we do come at it from a place of sincerity. In my opinion, the film is a text about faith and doubt. In the film, you have the most visible representation of an intersex individual in any media ever. I can’t name another intersex character! It has a very important message of if you’re queer or marginalized, you still belong in this church. In fact, not only do you belong, you’re the damn pope.
At least for now, people are very emotional. This was a big day and there’s a lot to be learned about this new pope. It’s something that affects Catholics, but the Catholic Church affects people far beyond just Catholics. It affects global affairs, whether or not you practice Catholicism. Making a zine, making a movie like Conclave, or making a meme is political in times of fascism — it’s super fucking political. Cobbling together a community to go watch a fucking chimney because of a movie is political.

What will the role of Pope Crave be moving forward? Will you continue to cover Catholic affairs?
I love being a Vatican journalist. We made the Twitter to support the zine, and the zine was about platforming creators that are marginalized. And that’s what we were doing. We had other projects coming up before the pope decided to die. (Rest in power, Frankie.) So, are we going to be exclusively superserious Catholic news source? That’s a question for Noellia that I can’t answer. I lob all the real Catholic things her way.

But do you want to be a space where people can gather online to talk about the pope moving forward?
Why not? I don’t think people should look to us as any kind of definitive source. We’re not going to be breaking news on whatever Pope Leo is doing, but he’s in our eyes and we do have opinions. We’ve been very vocal about Palestine and we’re super gay. That’s what the account has always been, and so if Pope Leo is part of the conversation then he is. But it’s not like we’re going to be reporting on his meals.

How did you know you wanted to take this conclave seriously, even though the Oscar race was done?
Noellia and I have been having really deep talks about Catholicism from a place of earnestness. We knew Pope Francis’s health was doing poorly and we said, “If he dies during the Oscar race, we are going to go to Rome and cover the conclave.” Then he passed on Easter Monday, which took us by surprise. We didn’t schedule that. Both of us are super employed right now, so we couldn’t be there physically for the conclave, but we had the plan in place. It was never a question of “if,” it was just when. We knew what we were doing: There’s going to be memes, it’s going to be smoke-watch. The timing just caught us off guard.

Has there been a negative response from devout Catholics to you guys at all?
Trad Caths are crazy. Catholic people have very strong opinions about the pope. But literally the biggest controversy we had on our account was whether you’re supposed to say “and with you” or “and with your spirit.” So, it’s been fun times. I don’t take the Trad Cath trolls seriously because I’m doing research on their sub-Reddit.

How did you fall in love with Conclave?
I don’t typically like films like Conclave. I do have a film background, and I typically enjoy films that do not make you feel good when you leave the theater. I like films that kind of attack the viewer. But I went to go see Conclave on October 22 and I was doing a lot of election volunteering. I was an election clerk. I was like, Ah shit, there’s a fascist in this movie. But then the film ended and I was like, I want to lib out. It’s crazy when you watch a film and it makes you want to lib out. The feeling I had in the theater when the credits rolled was very celebratory.

Do you think America is ready for there to be an American pope?
I think I’m gonna see some of the worst tweets I’m ever going to see in my life for a good while. People think he’s a leftist Marxist. But if the Curia, who have famously locked themselves in for over three years, elected an American pope that quickly, then I guess America has to reckon with an American pope.