A conclave, a chimney, and the votes as written

The notes open with a student viewing of The Two Popes — they give the English title that way — directed by Fernando Meirelles, with Anthony Hopkins as Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, and Jonathan Pryce as Francis, Jorge Bergoglio. They date the Netflix release to 11 December 2019, and the running time to 126 minutes. One hundred and fifteen cardinals from fifty-two countries gather in the Sistine Chapel; news goes out through a chimney, white for a new pope, black if the ballot fails.

Jorge, from Argentina, hums Abba’s Dancing Queen, a man, they write, who has stepped over the church’s wall into the world. The German Ratzinger barely acknowledges him. The first counts they give are 47 for Ratzinger, 10 for Bergoglio, 9 for Carlo Maria Martini; 77 votes, 67 percent, are not reached, and the smoke is black. On the third ballot, they say, Ratzinger is elected. Bergoglio’s side argues that reform needs a politician; Plato, they add, held that a leader’s virtue is not wanting to lead, and that to become pope is only to become a martyr. Ratzinger answers that there is one unchanging truth, and that a pope must watch the faith and fight relativism. He is told, in this telling, that he is as conservative as a Nazi, and that people are leaving the Church.

A summer house, a bank, and two kinds of wall

Wrongdoing at the Vatican bank and a sexual-abuse scandal break; a papal secretary is arrested and sent to prison. Bergoglio writes asking to retire as a cardinal — not normally possible before 75, they note, without the pope’s assent. They meet at the summer residence. Ratzinger, good at Latin, defines its use: bad news given to cardinals in Latin, he says, makes only 20 percent of them angry. Jorge loves tango, football, and Argentina, and will not live in a house he finds too large for a cardinal.

His thoughts, as the notes list them: an austere life can be a blessing and a curse; Communion is given even to the divorced because it is food for the poor, not a reward for the good; the greater the sin, the more it should be received, and mercy is dynamite that blasts the wall between church and world; the Church is in love with itself, and the age asks for change it will not make. Benedict answers that a wall must remain, and that people leave because of Western relativism and permissiveness. Jorge will no longer be a salesman for a product he cannot in conscience promote; the pope replies that a church married to the age will be a widow in the next generation. Change, Jorge says, is not the same as compromise — clerical celibacy, they write, was not required until the twelfth century, and angels were not mentioned until the fifth; nothing in nature is static, and the Lord also changes. Ratzinger asks where, if the Lord is always moving, one is to find the one who is the truth, the way and the life, and says they are keeping a tradition of two thousand years.

Buenos Aires, a resignation, and 2013

The point of Benedict’s difficulty, the notes write, is that a cardinal’s wrong was hidden: nine abused children mattered less, in this telling, than nine million of the faithful — a greatest-happiness view of justice — when condemnation under canon law was what was needed, which they associate with John Rawls. Confession, Jorge says, does not help the victim; sin is a wound, not a stain, and forgiveness is not enough. The pope cannot hear the Lord’s voice, and needs a hearing aid. Jorge tells a lonely pope that the world can be chaotic and is beautiful for that, and that he is popular because he tries only to live as himself.

In 1956, in Buenos Aires, waiting for a sign and receiving none, Jorge decides to live his own life; on the way to propose to a girlfriend the notes name Amalia, he is drawn into a church by music, hears a confession, and takes the priesthood. He later confesses his own fault. In 1976 a military dictatorship overthrows the government, and, they write, 30,000 are killed; many priests and nuns are murdered, and thinking it his duty to protect them, he cooperates with the junta — “go and have tea with the murderers,” as the notes put the reproach. After democratisation in 1983 he is sent abroad, and in Córdoba reflects on the sin of not having stood up. Benedict decides to resign, and asks Jorge to announce it; there is a precedent, they say, in Celestine V in 1294. He will become an incarnation of silence, a scholar not an administrator, and can no longer see with his left eye. Benedict resigns in 2013, they write, and will live as a pilgrim. Those dates and figures stay as the notes record them. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes, a student reading of The Two Popes, with the 2019 release, the vote figures, and the 2013 resignation left as the notes record them.

Last updated: 15 November 2026