Originally published at National Catholic Register
Arriving on moviegoers’ screens this Friday, the new movie Conclave bills itself as a star-studded mystery-thriller centered on the selection of a new pope for the Catholic Church. The film, which opens Oct. 25 in the U.S., is poised to make a splash at the box office and is already generating awards-season buzz.
In the weeks leading up to its release, however, the film has already garnered considerable controversy and biting criticism — with much of the ire from Catholics centered on the film’s twist ending.
Based on a 2016 novel by British author Robert Harris, Conclave follows a group of the Church’s cardinals as they navigate ecclesiastical politics, personal rivalries and scandals, and other obstacles as they seek to elect the Church’s new leader.
In the end, the cardinals inadvertently elect to the papacy a person who they believed to be a man — but in reality, the cardinal they elected was born a woman and raised as a male by her parents because she was born with an intersex condition.
Though not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination, the question of whether the Catholic Church could or would ever ordain women — either as deacons
