In the Vatican Movie Conclave, Big Secrets Are Revealed. Here Are Three Real Life Papal Conclaves Marked by Controversy

After the death of a pope, the conclave of cardinals that meets to elect his successor are sworn to secrecy. As a result, the proceedings, which traditionally take place in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, are perfect fodder for authors and filmmakers.

In the movie Conclave—out in theaters today (Oct. 25) and based on Robert Harris’s eponymous 2016 thriller—a group of cardinals played by Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Lucian Msamati are rattled by secrets about one another revealed during the voting process. There’s also a cardinal of Kabul who nobody knew existed until he showed up (played by Carlos Diehz). On top of the explosive secrets, a car bomb shatters the windows of the Sistine Chapel. And the biggest secret of all comes out in the last five minutes of the movie.

While Conclave is fiction, here have been real-life controversial conclaves throughout history. Here’s a look back at three of the most dramatic ones:

The conclave that resulted in two popes

When the 1378 conclave convened, a debate raged about whether the pope should be in Avignon, France, or in Rome. The pope had been based in Avignon since 1309, as the French king sought greater influence over the papacy.

An estimated 20,000 people swarmed the 1378 conclave in Rome to make their opinion known, including peasants who traveled from the countryside. 

According to Frederic J. Baumgartner’s Behind Locked Doors: A History of the Papal Elections, the crowd shouted things like, “We want a Roman pope, or at least an Italian, or else you will die!” One heckler shouted “If you cardinals don’t give us one, we will make your heads as red as your hats.” At one point, to shoo the mob away, the cardinals pretended they had elected an elderly, feeble Italian cardinal by having him stand at the window until the crowd dispersed.

The cardinals quickly elected the archbishop of Bari, Bartolomeo Prignano, and he took the name Urban VI. The cardinals assumed he would agree to resign immediately after things calmed down in Rome, so they could then elect whomever the favorite was. But Urban didn’t resign, and he flew into so many violent rages that the cardinals didn’t trust him and declared the papacy vacant. In his place they elected the cardinal of Geneva, who would take the name Clement VII.

“That's the only time in history where you have at least a large portion of the same group of cardinals electing two different men as Pope,” says Baumgartner.

For the next four decades, there were two popes—even three popes at one point—until the Council of Constance (1414-1418) formalized the authority of a single pope in Rome. 

The conclave where a cardinal was beat up

At the 1605 conclave, cardinals who supported church historian Cesare Baronius and the cardinals who supported former soldier Domenico Tosco were so fired up that they began pushing and shoving each other. 

The commotion could even be heard outside of the building. Elderly Cardinal Visconti suffered several broken bones. In the end, the cardinals choose someone both sides could agree on: Camillo Borghese, who became known as Paul V.

The 1605 conclave is “the only case of that kind of violence in a conclave, in which someone is actually injured,” Baumgartner says. “There’s an occasional example of pushing and shouting, but for the most part, these are elderly men [who] don't have the energy to invest too much time in pushing and shouting.” 

The last conclave where an emperor had veto power

In the 1903 conclave, Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I vetoed the leading candidate, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla.

“The emperor used the right of exclusion, or jus exclusivæ, to block Rampolla's election,” Massimo Faggioli, a professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, wrote in an email. “This right allowed certain Catholic monarchs to veto a candidate for the papacy.”

It’s unclear why the emperor interfered. 

There is a theory that Rampolla didn’t support a Catholic funeral for the emperor’s son, Crown Prince Rudolf, because he took his own life, believed to be a sin. “Several people have speculated that was because his son committed suicide,” says Baumgartner.

Once elevated, the chosen Pope, Pius X, banned that type of veto.

The secrecy of conclaves

After the controversy in 1903, conclaves became much more secretive. “We know a great deal more about the election, say, of 1549 than we do about the elections back in 2013 because the documentation—diaries, ambassador reports, the ballot numbers—all of that stuff exists in large quantities for most of the elections before 1903,” Baumgartner says.

The more secret the conclave process has become, the more likely conspiracy theories spread. As Faggioli explains, “conclaves have acquired the potential to become more controversial in the 20th century because of the mass media and now in the 21st century because of social media, digital media, the crisis of mainstream media, conspiracy theories etc.”

In early conclaves, cardinals were overwhelmingly Italian and knew each other’s politics going into the process so there weren’t as many surprises. “The number of cardinals is very small, and they all knew each other very well,” Baumgartner says, “They knew what their sins were.”

As the number of cardinals grew in the 20th century, the more likely it was that cardinals would not know everyone in the room. If there are conclaves where cardinals find out secrets about one another, they are likely to be in the 20th and 21st centuries.

But there is no known precedent for the bombshell secret revealed about Pope elected at the end of the movie Conclave.