I think of some of the criticisms of the film are because certain Catholics just don't want to admit that it is political, in fact, to pick a Pope.

I think there's just a real resistance to admitting that this isn't just a bunch of people praying and the Holy Spirit, you know, kind of announcing to them who's going to be Pope.

There is politicking. There are dinners where people

plot and scheme. There are, you know, head counting of the votes, kind of horse trading and log

rolling. And, you know, like, that's a real part of any conclave. I mean, as someone who's, like,

a little too into Catholic business, like, I've read a lot about the history of the church and just in my readings

around European history. And, like, the conclave has always been kind of on the take.

And people have always known this. That's how you get a Rodrigo Borsha. That's how you get to

Medici popes, right? Like, Rodrigo Borgia's son, Cheseray Borgia was made a cardinal without

even being ordained a priest. Like, the Catholic Church's history is like riven with corruption.

And that corruption is like still on display today, right?

Like there was a case, what, two, three years ago where the Vatican was laundering money for

like Russian oligarchs by buying London real estate. There was a big

expose in the financial times about it. And so like this idea that this like beautiful mystery

laden process of selecting the next pope would be apolitical, that to me feels like, I feel like

people used to have a much more, I guess, like sanguine eye on these things. It probably is partially just

that as the worldly power of the church has diminished in the modern age, like in that process,

the kind of status of its like sort of spiritual purity and the kind of performance of its

spiritual function, preventing that from being tainted by

the worldly becomes more important because it can't actually exercise control or power

or influence on the global stage any other way. Its image becomes much more important to people

as its actual kind of coercive power is diminished. But I also think, like, do we think it's an American

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