#cardinal adeyemi

[dragonsareawesome123]

Love that he’s played both a character who fought against the Catholic Church and a character who is literally a cardinal in the Catholic Church ajsjsksks

[voyage-of-the-porn-spreader]

Lucian Msamati absolutely blew me away in Conclave and I just dont see enough people saying it. He really took the character of Adeyemi, on all fronts just a terrible, awful, person, and he acted his fucking heart out - I found myself in moments aghast that I was feeling sorry for this guy. This fucking guy! By all accounts more reactionary then Tedesco, and yet I saw the light leave his eyes as it registers that he will never be pope, never - and I felt his pain as if it was my own, followed by the smarting whip of self-disgust as the memory of his misdeeds crashed back in. Phenomenal. 10000000 plaudits for Lucian Msamati.

[dontbeallupinmyfriesdawg]

Of course I feel absolutely feral and not at all normal about Conclave as a film. It's an absolute masterpiece and I want to watch it again and again.

One thing I deeply appreciated though. When Lawrence confronted Adeyemi, though not condemning him he didn't let him wriggle off the hook when he tried to explain away his relationship with Sister Shanumi as a lapse in judgement because 'they were young'.

Lawrence's response is perfect "No, no, no, she was young, she was 19. You were 30"

It's important that it isn't just brushed off as a sexual indiscretion born of human weakness. I could be wrong but as far as I can tell Adeyemi was in the ministry when this occurred (because if we was just a free single man it wouldn't have been such a big deal). So it makes it all the more sinister that he had an inappropriate relationship with a 19 year old girl who was likely one of his parishioners and got her pregnant.

I like that the narrative clearly shows his removal from the situation by his dismissive statement "If the child is in fact mine" whereas Sister Shanumi is clearly still consumed by the guilt of it all, she likely became a nun for that very reason and Lawrence mentions the very reason she will stay quiet is to protect her son. A child she has very likely not seen since giving birth to him.

[cleverchaoslight]

conclave enjoyers please join my group

[sparklywaistcoat]

especially not when the bullshit is rape

"she was very young. she was nineteen. you were thirty." was one of my favorite lines in the movie because one thing lawrence is not gonna do no matter how much sympathy he feels for the person is let them get away with some bullshit

[dijon-mayonnaise]

Cardinal stickers :3

[ijustwantedtoresetmypassword]

I need y'all conclave shippers and writers of fabulous stories to know: kissing would make these men so. much. worse

these idiots built their whole identity on not-kissing. if you make them kiss they *will* implode

[randomfandomss]

WHERE IS THE COMPULSORY BAKE OFF CONCLAVE FIC?????

With these queens in the tent?!?! It would totally fuckkkk!!!!

[jimothyhalperts]

The thing about conclave is that Cardinal Bellini served count, sister agnes served cunt, cardinal Adeyemi served cunt, cardinal Tedesco served vaping cunt, Dead Pope served post grave drama, Benítez served babygirl, Lawrence served wet cat born in a cardboard box, Tremblay served something that I'm not sure what it is, anyways Oscars all around

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

i watched conclave and now I really want to know more about all the drama with cardinals, how do you find out about that kind of stuff?

Ohhhh boy. Where to even begin?

Well, to start with, a lot of the cardinals in Conclave are based on real people! Bellini is obviously Carlo Maria Martini (right down to having a surname that's a mixed drink), especially in the book, where he's apparently Italian rather than Italian-American (I love that, unlike with Lawrence, who's also Italian in the book,* they didn't change his name; Stanley Tucci is eminently capable of playing an ItAm guy named Aldo Bellini <3). Martini was a "liberal" Archbishop of Milan who for much of the 90s was widely expected to succeed Pope John Paul II but ended up stalling out at the 2005 conclave.** Tedesco has a lot in common with Raymond Burke, an archconservative cardinal who's still alive and very vocal in the media, although Burke, conversely, is American rather than Italian. (America unfortunately has a very conservative local Catholic Church in general these days.) Tedesco and Burke even look similar, right down to the campy, "muffled sounds of 'Good Luck, Babe!' playing in the distance" fashion sense and body language. Tremblay has a similar career trajectory to Marc Ouellet, who, like Tremblay, was widely respected and seen as pretty middle-of-the-road until serious scandals started coming out. Adeyemi doesn't seem to be based on or inspired by any one real person, but the virulent homophobe who isn't that reactionary otherwise is a very common type of sub-Saharan African cardinal, perhaps most prominently represented currently by Fridolin Ambongo Besungu. Like with Adeyemi, I can see Ambongo picking up steam but then imploding over the course of the next IRL conclave, although it would be uncharitable to Ambongo to assume it would be for the same reasons. And so on.

(Benitez is an ideal, rather than someone inspired by a real person or ideological type, but there are cardinals who've had similarly high-stress and altruistic career and life trajectories, like Marco Zenari, Pierbattista Pizzaballa (which is seriously his name),*** and, in fairness to him, also Ambongo, who is Congolese and is regularly physically threatened by political and paramilitary forces within the DRC.)

As to how one learns more about this, you could start by setting news alerts for some of these people's names--Matteo Zuppi, Luis Antonio Tagle, Pietro Parolin, Peter Erdo, and Victor Manuel Fernandez are other names to potentially watch--or reading some books that have been written recently about the current politics of the Church, the Curia, and the Francis papacy. There's one called In the Closet of the Vatican that is incredibly scurrilous, as its title would suggest, but a rip-roaring read if you're not too concerned about forming possibly-unfair negative opinions of some of these guys. There are also writers like Austen Ivereigh and (gag) Edward Pentin who've made whole careers of being Vatican Inside Baseball Understanders, especially since Pope Francis was elected in 2013.****

In general I'd say Conclave is a very good representation of the way these people think and act, especially the constant tension between venal ambition and genuine belief that they are participating in a divine agency in the world. The tendency in non-Catholic and even some Catholic circles is to assume that only the former is present, but people are complicated.

I hope some of this helps, anon!

*I looked it up and in the book he's called Jacopo Lomeli. I've never seen this surname before, but apparently some real people do have it.

**The Catholic Church has its own ideological spectrum and there are ways in which liberal, progressive, conservative, etc. are not very useful terms, but for broad purposes they work here.

***Patriarch of Jerusalem, the only Palestinian cardinal (cardinals are counted as "from" the countries that they lived in when they became cardinals, not necessarily the countries they're from originally; in his case his country of origin is, unsurprisingly, Italy). As you might imagine, he's been in religious news a lot lately.

****Francis, or Jorge Mario Bergoglio as he was then, is widely believed to have been the runner-up at the above-mentioned 2005 conclave, which produced Pope Benedict XVI.

[cosmic-carpals]

the last shot of conclave…lawrence smiling down at three young nuns laughing together as they cross the courtyard…a perfect ending for a movie where sex plays such a large role. the nuns always in the background, facilitating, invisible and silent, until the incident with adeyemi and with sister agnes calling out tremblay. the other cardinals advising bellini not to talk about how he thinks women should play a greater role in the church. the church isn’t tradition, the church isn’t the past, the church is the future we decide on today. the surprise be-uterused pope. a fantastic movie. i want to watch it again.

[cassatine]

my conclave review i guess! i was going to gush in chat but then. too many words.

so literally all i knew about it going in was (1) a cardinal vapes in it (2) probably it's about a conclave?? (3) good vibes according to dashboard osmosis. the cinematography was a+, which i always appreciate. i liked that on one level it's a perfect comedy, really fucking funny in a sort of understated way. the beginning kinda reminded me of the death of stalin, what with the inciting event being the guy at the top of the hierarchy dying… somehow excellent comedy setup. at the very beginning, when lawrence & co struggle a bit to take the ring off the pope's corpse and it's all so ritualized, that's when i knew it was going to be Funny.

but beyond the fact that it was funnier than i expected... i liked the layers. most of all i think i liked the earnestness. ralph fiennes mid-crisis of faith, hating his job, trying to be a moral man in a system that is broken?? chef's kiss. the other cardinals of note were also nicely layered, like adeyemi? it would have been so easy to just stop at his being homophobic and treat his having had a kid being revealed as comeuppance but the way he cries and asks lawrence to pray with him… he sucks and it's a good thing he's taken off the race but it also happens for the wrong reason. bellini who's lying to himself and everyone else over not wanting to be the pope when he so clearly does and still letting himself be bought by the promise of a nice post… and yet he is not just an hypocrite. he sees he failed. he apologizes. he is only human. tedesco could have been a one note villain but he's the coolest dude around, and on a fundamental level that's part of what makes him dangerous: he's a reactionary and a bigot but he makes it kinda sexy. you want to like him; he's fun to watch and he has style, something the other cardinals probably wouldn't recognize if it hit them in the face. benitez. well. benitez is jesus. sister agnes was neat, it's a bit sad we don't really get to know her but she's indispensable and i love that for her. like. here's a bunch of dudes with all the decisional power who expect her to just exist in the background doing the menial work and then her printer expertise ends up being vital, and in general lawrence wouldn't have managed as well without her support… noice.

the end feels a bit easy, like lbr benitez being elected pope because he made a nice speech is ludicrous, but also… it works for me?

(1) on some level the film is about the difficulties of trying to be a moral person in a system that does not reward being moral. sure it's about faith and doubt and the limitations of organized religion. it's about catty bitches vying for power in a ritualized way that, on some level, speaks of an institution that ossified, that resists change (and on that note: benitez, obviously-the-best candidate only gets elected because people skirt the isolation rules, because the outside world intrudes. also because he is jesus.) it's stated near the beginning that the pope hadn't lost faith in god but in the church, and through the movie we can see why, all the machinations and the thirst for power and the fallibility of the men within the institution. through lawrence we see how much easier it would be to just… stop trying, to do the convenient thing, the easy thing, rather than the right thing, and to find justifications for that: better not make waves and better not make a scandal, for the sake of electing a blandly liberal pope rather than tedesco. and who would disagree? sure, better a bland liberal than reactionary tedesco. but then comes the ethical quandary: should the goal of avoiding one evil mean closing your eyes to another? should you forsake your sense of right and wrong for the greater good? too often i think we are told to prioritize the greater good, and maybe sometimes we should. but maybe sometimes we shouldn't. maybe sometimes we should hold to our principles. in the end, benitez being elected pope isn't going to miraculously make the catholic church and its agents unproblematic. but it is a win, and it happens because lawrence kept choosing to do (what he believes is) the right thing, the moral thing, even when it's not easy, even when it's inconvenient, even when he's told he's being naive and hurting the greater cause. and i appreciate that message.

(2) as i said: benitez is jesus. the film is a parable… it's a story about how jesus showed up, completedly unexpected, in the middle of the church his disciples built, and because the church is made up of people and people are flawed and faillible and too busy with things like power, they did not notice jesus walking among them. at least not until god (metaphorically) shone a light on him. like yes sure the way benitez ends up the one elected is ludicrous but!! it took an act of god. not the bombs per se. but the tragedy of it intruding into the isolated conclave? the windows exploding, the light coming in, this is what allows the true stakes to become clear again, and for benitez's love thy neighbour speech to take place at all - a speech contrasted with tedesco's own, all the style stripped from him, making it clear he is a man who reaches for hate and not compassion. it's a parable!! it takes a tragedy. it takes an act of god.

[funnypages]

Conclave: The Surprise Movie Recommendation of October

So this is not at all what I would usually share on here, but if you looking for a movie to see with some of you older family, especially with the holidays coming up next few months, I definitely recommend you check out Conclave, a political thriller/mystery set during the election of a new pope, based of a 2016 novel by Robert Harris

Basic plot: Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is a cardinal of the liberal faction in the Roman Catholic Church, who receives news that the current pope (unnamed but heavily modeled after current Pope Francis) has died. As Dean of the College of Cardinals, it is Lawrence's responsibility to organize and manage the papal conclave during which the cardinals of the Church will be sequestered within the Sistine Chapel and elect the new pope.

Going into the conclave the 4 main candidates for pope are:

Cardinal Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) - An Italian cardinal from the extremely conservative traditionalist faction of the church, who wishes to undue all reforms the Catholic Church has initiated since the 1960s; and is a racist, fundamentalist, homophobe. The closest thing to a villain the movie has

Cardinal Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) - A Nigerian cardinal, who while a liberal on economic issues and not wanting to roll back all reforms, is a hardliner against acceptance of LGBT+ issues.

Cardinal Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow) - A Canadian Conservative (although arguably more of a centrist), who has been machinating for months prior to the old pope's death to be elected, and will do anything to make sure it happens

Cardinal Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci) - An American cardinal who is a friend of Lawrence and the late pope. The candidate for the liberal/reform faction; he wants to improve relations with non-Christian religions, moderate the church on abortion and LGBT+ issues, and open to allowing women in the clergy. Although more sympathetic than the conservative candidates, we come to discover he is just as power hungry as them for the papacy.

As Lawrence tries to manage the election (while also supporting his friend as neutral as possible), he finds himself trying to investigate conspiracies, coverups, blackmail; and the appearance of a mysterious cardinal nobody has met before, but was appointed by the pope in secret prior to his death.

The movie is incredibly well acted and shot; and while quite critical of the Catholic Church at times; quite sympathetic in actual religious belief. I have seen some very pissed of reviews complaining about it being "woke" but while it is definitely on the side of the liberal faction, both Tremblay and Adeyemi get sympathetic moments. Although the "woke" accusations probably come mostly from the final twist. Won't give it away, but the movie says Queer Rights.

If you are still curious, I recommend checking out the trailer. It actually does a really good job of not spoiling anything but mixing around lines and scenes.

[air-mechanical]

Finally reading Conclave the book (so much love for it) and during the second reading in Spanish, before Lawrence’s homily, it's fun to see Lawrence observing the cardinal's reactions: wise, bored, religious ecstasy, asleep.

Film Cardinals reacting to Lawrence’s homily:

- Tedesco: disgusted and disappointed

- Tremblay: suspicious and mildly alarmed

- Adeyemi: suspicious and alarmed

- Bellini: awe and surprise. Instinctive positive reception before his ambition wakes up and grinds its teeth in deeper

- Random Cardinal: eyes closed, huge smile, barely contained ecstasy

- Random Cardinal: eyes closed, mouth open, drooling, asleep

- Benetiz: happy, content. Knows with iron certainty who he's going to vote for

[milfchellepfeiffer]

oh no the pope is dead and you have to elect a new one