Vice President and sentient gravy stain JD Vance was jokingly credited with the death of Pope Francis in April, as evidenced by numerous memes and comedic riffs still circulating. It’s a rash indictment; in pop culture’s haste to identify Francis’ killer, the possibly fatal prescience of Edward Berger’s "Conclave," a film about the nuts, bolts and holy smokes involved in the election of a new pope, was overlooked. Did Vance’s handshake send Francis to the hereafter, or Berger’s creative hubris?
It’s the plain old unsexy truth that a cerebral stroke and subsequent cardiac arrest killed Pope Francis, not Vance’s touch or Berger’s cinema. Think of "Conclave" as a mixed blessing: it’s a wonderful movie, structured around an ensemble whose work is equal to any other seen in 2024’s offerings, notably Ralph Fiennes, Lucian Msamati, a perfectly unctuous John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini, delicate with her sassiness; it is also instructive of how the church, as a universal body, responds to a pope’s death, and why their passing is consequential to those outside the faith (or who simply have none).
