Bishop Robert Barron Pans ‘Conclave’ Movie: ‘Run Away From It As Fast As You Can’

The film, based on the 2016 Robert Harris novel of the same name, hit American movie theaters on Oct. 25.

Bishop Robert Barron is urging Catholics to skip the new film Conclave — a fictional movie that depicts a papal conclave — saying that it “checks every woke box.”

“If you are interested in a film about the Catholic Church that could have been written by the editorial board of the New York Times, this is your movie,” Barron, the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, said in a post on X after watching the film himself.

The film, based on the 2016 Robert Harris novel of the same name, hit American movie theaters on Oct. 25. It depicts ideological and theological infighting among Catholic cardinals during the election of a new pope. More traditional cardinals are pitted against others who are portrayed as being open to changes in doctrine that are contrary to Catholic teaching. 

“The hierarchy of the Church is a hotbed of ambition, corruption, and desperate egotism [in the movie],” Bishop Barron continued. “Conservatives are xenophobic extremists and the liberals are self-important schemers. None can escape this irredeemable situation.”

In the movie, a fictional cardinal with female chromosomes and an intersex disorder is selected as the new pope. 

“The only way forward is the embrace of the progressive buzz words of diversity, inclusion, indifference to doctrine, and the ultimate solution is a virtue-signaling cardinal who takes the papal name of Innocent and who is a biological female,” Bishop Barron said.

“Since it checks practically every woke box, I’m sure it will win a boatload of awards, but my advice is to run away from it as fast as you can.”

The priesthood, including the papacy, is reserved for biological men. According to St. John Paul II’s apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and … this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

Pope Francis has affirmed this Church teaching and spoken about other important roles women have in the Catholic Church. The final document from the Church’s Synod on Synodality encourages the expansion of women’s leadership roles within the Church.

Late last month, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights issued a warning about the book that the film was based on and the film itself.

“Conclave is more a piece of anti-Catholic propaganda than it is a work of art,” the statement reads. “It might have stunning cinematic sequences and a star-studded cast, but those things do not redeem the underlying ugliness of the project, namely it aims to paint the Catholic Church in the most negative light possible.”

The Catholic League statement also notes that Harris, the author of the book, is not Catholic and not, in fact, religious at all. 

Father Carter Griffin, the rector of St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C., spoke to CNA about the filmmakers’ decision to depict a person with female chromosomes and an intersex disorder as the selected pope, saying “a stable, secure, and well-ordered sexual identity is a necessary condition for priestly formation and ordination.”

“It is our individual and unique creation as either male or female that identifies us as man or woman, not our subjective feelings or choices,” he said.

The film’s director, Edward Berger, has responded to some of the criticism from Catholics. He told Yahoo Entertainment that the film is not meant to be “a takedown of the Catholic Church” and that he “tried to portray … the characters in the movie as humans.”

“In the end, if there were controversy, I never think it’s bad,” he said. “I invite that. I love that. We’ve lost the ability to argue with each other without fighting each other. And if everyone has a different opinion and a different feeling, that’s a good thing. If I disagree with you, I might learn something from you … and suddenly go, ‘Ah, OK, never thought about it that way. Thank you for teaching me.’” 

The film had a budget of $20 million and has earned more than $15 million at the box office so far. According to Rotten Tomatoes, about 92% of critics liked the film, while about 84% of viewers rated the film positively. The film has a rating of 7.7 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database.