Opinion: The complexities of the papacy – a conversation with Carlos Diehz

Los Angeles Times

25-04-2025

A story that explores the selection process of the pope, 'Conclave' is a 2024 film that delves deep into the papacy and the cardinals that make up the institution. Following Cardinal Lawrence, the dean of the College of Cardinals and the person who is responsible for running the election and ensuring that a pope is picked, throughout the selection process, Lawrence discovers the secretive, ambitious, and power-seeking ways of the cardinals running for the role of pope. Left reeling by these pieces of information, Lawrence struggles with his faith and with the entire institution of the papacy, worried that the very foundation of the Catholic Church is one built off of lies. Do the cardinals see the role of the pope as a way to truly serve God, or is it just a stepping stone to power?
The Papal Conclave consists of a gathering of the College of Cardinals in Vatican City. Knowing all of the members, Lawrence is shocked to discover a new cardinal joining the Conclave, Cardinal Benitez. Made a cardinal in pectore, or in secret because of political and security reasons as he served in Kabul, by the former Pope, he is a newcomer that is enshrouded in secrecy. Like he does with the other cardinals, Lawrence sets out to investigate him but doesn't learn much except that the Pope paid for Benitez to be flown to Geneva for a medical appointment that was eventually cancelled. Although Benitez is a mystery, he does not hold the same sentiments as most of the cardinals and does not seem interested in the role of Pope. The power-hungry gleam that the cardinals who are in the running for the papacy, such as Cardinal Tedesco, Cardinal Adeyemi, Cardinal Tremblay, and Cardinal Bellini, possess is not something present in Benitez's eyes.
Carlos Diehz, an architect, a newcomer in the world of acting, and the man who portrayed Cardinal Benitez, felt drawn to the character of Benitez. Benitez is a man portrayed to be someone who does not let his ambition and need for power blind his mission for God. Different from every single character in the film, Benitez clearly stands out.
Wanting to be a priest when he was a teenager, Diehz told me portraying Benitez had 'everything to do with being happy about portraying someone who is loyal to the principals; who is working with the people. Because he is exactly who I wanted to be when I was 19 or 20 years old, and I felt this itch of going and changing my life, becoming a missionary, a priest. So, yeah, I had that idea. I didn't know exactly how I would get there, but I changed my decision along the way when I started architecture. And then this character comes up, an original and everything, and I said yeah, this is it! This is even better, because I never imagined being in a conclave. That never crossed my mind, that this character is going all the way to that point. And that was a very attractive point in portraying this character.'
Although Diehz decided to not follow a path into religious work, he still got a feel of that lifestyle while filming 'Conclave'. When learning the art of architecture in school, Rome was one of the main references. Diehz said ' it was a dream of my life to be in Rome, and be able to walk those streets. So, being there, first is to be in the city; to get the feeling of the city and all the 4000 years of layers of history. It was fantastic. And then going into these, these locations. We visited the Sistine Chapel, right after we visited the set of the Sistine Chapel, and we noticed how similar they were. So we would kind of relive the feeling of being there in the Sistine Chapel every time we got into the set. And it was for me, it was like that. Every time we walked, we would feel, again this, this solemnity to it. And I think we all did, as actors. Then, in locations, we did several takes in other museums and palaces and everything. So, it's not exact religious architecture, but it's the same architects, the same sculptors, the same painters, the same masters. They decorated the Churches and the Vatican and everything, so you will get the feeling again. It was fantastic every time they would call 'cut', or 'take a break', we would just gawk at the art, and the frescos, and the sculptors, and everything.'
However, the architecture and locations weren't the only thing about the papacy that the actors on set got to experience. Lisy Christl, the acclaimed costume designer, designed every single piece of clothing in the film. With her expertise, robes with heavy reds, luscious velvets, and intricate gold detailing were created, and the end-product looked very similar to the actual robes of the cardinals.
Diehz could feel himself being built into this world, and 'together with the robes, and the, well the script and everything. Everything comes together and it's like probably 75% of the work is done for you to feel comfortable as an actor, and then the other 25% is to really believe you are there.'
Telling me about the grandeur and the opulence of everything he witnessed, I was reminded of the long and event-filled history of the papacy. Having been part of this world for thousands of years, the papacy has amassed many scandals by its very popes. Whether it was Pope Alexander VI, a man who fathered many illegitimate children, Pope Leo X, an indulgent pope who used his money and power as a way to control the status quo, or Pope Julius II, a man who seemed more concerned with war and glory than spiritual matters, many of the Popes history has witnessed haven't been the most concerned with spiritual leadership. This is something that can be seen in 'Conclave' as well. The cardinals in the running for pope are so preoccupied with the idea of being pope that they seem to have forgotten what being pope means: representing an institution of Christ and of God.
In the film, there are characters such as Cardinal Tedesco, a traditionalist deadset on winning and proudly stating his beliefs that the Church should go back to its Latin roots, isolating the institution from billions, and that a religious war should be waged against Islam. There is a Cardinal Adeyemi, a conservative who is very open with his right-leaning beliefs despite the fact that he secretly fathered an illegitimate child with a nun, Sister Shanumi. There is a Cardinal Tremblay, a moderate who paid cardinals to vote for him and transferred Sister Shanumi to the Vatican to sabotage the career of his fellow brother. And there is a Cardinal Bellini, who views the election as a war and not as a way to serve God. Participating in sinful acts and committing acts of hypocrisy, one wonders what the papacy truly stands for. Do the cardinals who make up the institution join to truly and earnestly honor God, or is it just a way to serve their own personal vendettas?
Cardinal Benitez can see very clearly that it is the latter for the cardinals in the running for pope. Having the opportunity to speak to the College of Cardinals after an event that shakes the Conclave and shows the true colors of some of the cardinals, such as Cardinal Tedesco, Benitez states that 'these last few days we have shown ourselves to be small and petty men. We have seemed concerned only with ourselves, with Rome, with these elections, with power.'
Portraying an institution with members such as Tedesco and Benitez, two polar opposites of each other, Diehz said that this film simply tried to 'comment on humans, on humanity, on the human endeavor and what humans do in a position of power. When the stakes are, and in this case, it's as high as like they can get. It's like 'I am the representative of God'. Like, really? And so, you have to, you have to deliver, right? So, it's a struggle that happens in every institution because the church is human at the end. It might be spied by God, and by higher purposes, but in the end, it's run by humans, it's structured by humans and everything. Therefore, it's prone to get out of the way every now and then. But, uh, it also shows that there's always people committed to the principles and you can see that it in a political party. You see that some people are voting for outrageous things. There's still people in that organization holding the values and the foundation, principles of each institution. They are holding those principles high and they are committed to those principles. So, it's not just the church, it's political parties. And you may see it as you grow up. I was a part of the student council in high school and everything. And you can see that some of the people in the student council see it just like a pastime, it was to socialize. Or it was just to put some nice thing on their resume when they apply to college or whatever. It's not to serve the others, it's not to develop their abilities, it's just to show off and be there. And be looked at, be seen, so there's people like that everywhere. In the Catholic Church, it's more, I would think, it would be more notorious, these deviations from the principles, because they claim to be the guardians of all these things that are held to be good, right? Morally good, spiritually good. But, uh, you can see that happening in every situation. And when you look at the histories you mentioned, when the popes had these authorities over certain territories and they were actually heads of a physical state and everything — that's when things went worse. So the restructuring of the church and everything helped to minimize that, to put limits to that power. But still, there's a lot of power. There's a lot of influence around war. Some people use it for different purposes.'
When it comes to radical characters, such as Tedesco and Tremblay, Diehz said 'I don't think Tedesco wants to- wants to inflict evil on anyone, but he is convinced that we are at this point because he is scared. We need to fight back, so he talks from a place of fear. So then, going back to Benitez who he sees- all these other characters reacting and giving into fear instead of standing their ground with a solid spiritual base. I don't doubt that people like Tedesco and Tremblay — they obviously have some political ambitions too — but either they come honestly from a place of fear or they want to instill fear. Either way Benitez is the voice of reason, he is the adult in the room, which is what therapy always keeps telling us. I mean, as a parent, when you have kids that just throw a tantrum in the middle of a mall, they throw themselves on the floor and get pretty angry–you have to be the adult. You cannot react the same way as a kid. So in this situation, it's the same. Benitez tries to still be the adult in the middle of all these people who are getting astray from what they are–-from the purpose that called them, allegedly, right? But, yes, I think as a human institution, every human institution is prone to these kinds of conflicts and hopefully there will be adults. And one of the things my therapist used to tell me was like 'when you deal with kids and when you deal with clients, these kinds of endless conversation, this kind of snapping at each other, commences and there has to be one adult in the room that notices and puts a stop to it, puts an end to it, and calls it out And try to bring order to these situations…I mean, I don't know the actual situations of the cardinals in the Conclave. I do not doubt that there's people, there's a lot of people committed to the church and to the people they serve. And actually, there's a Cardinal, a missionary Cardinal who is based in Mongolia, who is in the College of Cardinals. So maybe he's even the inspiration for Benitez in some ways. But there's people like that in the Vatican, so that's a good relief.'
Showing that the Catholic Church is a human institution rather than one of perfectness and piety, there was some fear around the reception of the film, Diehz said. While the institution may try to maintain a certain image, 'Conclave' shows a deeper layer to the papacy. While working on the film, Diehz said that 'there was a little concern about the right groups, the fundamentalist groups. The Catholic Church, I would say, they aspire to be as spiritual as possible. I was part of a Catholic household. We have friends, and people close to us and even relatives and they say it's far from perfect, like way, way far from perfect. There is lots of conflict in agreements because we are humans, even between priests–they don't agree exactly on certain approaches, to the administration of the church, to how the sermon has to be delivered, etc. There's always a difference of thought, and that always goes up to the pope. When you see the Pope, he is trying to promote some reforms to be inclusive and more welcoming to traditionally ignored sectors of the population, there's always a reaction! There's always people in the Church that say 'No! The rules say this'. And you can see it even in some parishes, there's some persons and priests that are more welcoming to differences and more open to different opinions, and there are others that follow the rules more and so on. But that's their free will; they're exercising their free will.'
Other than portraying College of Cardinals as an organization with errors and faults, there was one other aspect of the film that caused a stir. After Cardinal Benitez gives his speech on what the cardinals truly need to focus on, the divided College seems to take a change of heart and the majority vote for one man to become pope. This man is Cardinal Benitez. After he is officially voted in, however, Cardinal Lawrence discovers the reason as to why Benitez had a scheduled medical appointment in Geneva. Born with both male and female sexual characteristics, Benitez is intersexual. The former Pope, knowing this, scheduled an appointment for Benitez to remove his female reproductive organs. However, after long deliberation, Benitez decides to forgo the operation as he knows that God made him the way He intended.
Cardinal Lawrence, knowing that Benitez is the right man for the job, does not make this information public and does not interfere with Benitez's appointment as pope. A heavy and controversial subject, Diehz said that 'we really play this story for the screen. We know there could be some pushback, we don't know how big. And not just for the portrayal of the Church at large, but because of the individual secrets, or little hidden things that everyone has. It's not just Tremblay and Tedesco, but also Benitez and how people is going to take it. So, it's interesting to see how the reaction hasn't been as big as we thought it could be. The reception of the movie has been way beyond better than we expected, around the world and how people individually has received the character of Cardinal Benitez so positively–that this little secret that Benitez has doesn't matter and that's why it's at the end of the film. And the author puts that at end, it's like does it really matter? Are you going to disqualify the best suited person to guide this millenary institution just because there's something he cannot change about himself? But everything he can change, he's done it, he has risked his life. If you read the book, there was a bomb attack against him, so that shows the kind of commitment and how devoted he is to live to the root of the gospel which is charity. Instead of postulating principals and following the rules, to love each other and do things for each other. So that's what gave us the assurance that we were doing a good thing. This is not a smear job, this is not a hit job against the Catholic Church. If anything it's like What if we bring those popes and cardinals from the Renaissance, we brought them here in this new context and we throw a couple of people committed to the Church as an institution, like Lawrence, and the Church as a bearer of the message of God, of Jesus, of Nazarath, as Benitez, as Saint Francis, as Saint Ignatius, as many other saints and missionaries that have existed. Not just in the Catholic Church, but in every single religious group. This is human nature, so is there anything scandalous about that, is there anything outrageous about it?'.
Although the characters and situations of 'Conclave' are fictional, Diehz said that he believes that 'Something like that may have already happened, I mean in 2000 years of history. Especially because the intersex traits — a lot of them are not visible, they're not perceptible. In the book they mention a little bit more. He noticed some differences, physically from other guys, but not entirely. So he may be like okay, I'm just a little bit different, I may be skinnier, slimmer, shorter and maybe some features of mine are a bit different, but I'm still a guy. So, that's why he lives as a guy and that's why he submitted to the seminary. But I think that may have already happened. And if it did happen, the author of the novel was very careful. Because this is an intersexed person, so he is a man and a woman. In the canonical law, it establishes that one has to be a man to be ordained as a priest. He's a man, also a woman, but he's a man. So, that brings in an invitation for debate, right? But it's not something the movie has to answer, I mean, we don't have to. And that is very clever that the author, the screenwriter, and the director, they leave that interpretation for you to talk about after the movie, and it's a good thing, it's a good thing! And Edward Berger has said several times 'Art is not meant to give you answers'. Art is, if anything, to pose some questions to you and make you wonder about your reality, your ideas, your principles, whatever happens around you, and everything is not meant to give you the answer. And I can coincide with that, because when I was in my spiritual phase back in my teenage years in a retreat, a Franciscan priest was telling us 'Religion is a personal thing. It's about your connection, not with God, but with everyone else' . If God is in everyone else, then we have to learn to connect with everyone else. We have to think for ourselves, what do we want? How do we want to be the vehicle of God's work, or God's love? And it's up to us, we have to do that job. We should not wait for someone to tell us what to do. The Church gives you some general guidelines to all the populations in the world, to all the members of the Church, but it's up to you to think about that. And that's why prayer, meditation, contemplation, it's very important and that's also why the author brings those ideas into the character of Benitez. When Lawrence visits Benitez, he has some candles set up because—it's not on screen—he was praying. He was doing some prayer, when Lawrence arrives, so that part of the scene was cut. But that was a principle that shows Benitez is a deep spiritual person that also reflects, and that contemplates.'
A spiritual man that focuses on how to help the world through religion, Benitez seems to be an outlier in the Vatican. However, history serves as a testament to the existence of religious figures who were just like Benitez. Diehz told me that one man in particular was a guiding light to him when trying to figure out how to play his character. Iñigo de Loyola, who Diehz described as a 'a manly man! Like a ladies' man, and very fiery temper, very short-fused guy. There's a war, an invasion from France, and he enlists in the army. He goes to the frontlines to fight against the French, and then a cannonball almost kills him and sends him back home. He's recovering and then his mother takes the 'Life of Saint Francis' and gives it to him to read. And then he reads it, and he realizes What am I doing with my life? There's higher things, there are more great things I could do with all my knowledge, my experience and everything. So, he decides to change his life. He changes his name to Ignatius and he is Ignatius de Loyola. He finds the Jesuit order and he goes and vows loyalty to the pope because he sees that mainly religious orders are just working for themselves and they don't pay much attention to the pope. So he goes and he offers his service. His mind is so structured, he's also deeply spiritual, but it's in a more structured way. So I said 'Yeah! This is kind of Benitez' , because Benitez is very spiritual, very loving, and he is a vehicle of God's motherly love. However, also he has a keen eye to spot who is going away and straying. He is a strategist, and that has allowed him to set up different ministries and missions around the world in very difficult areas. And in these very difficult areas, missionaries, priests, among the Catholic Church, and every religious person has to navigate with corrupt governments, with guerillas, with a lot of difficult people. So they need these skills to negotiate, to construct, to build, to guide, to structure. So Benitez is not going to show all that off, but he has a very, very, punctual way, a very precise way to deliver these drops of compassion, of encouragement, of caring, and everything. And when he has to raise his voice, he does it with authority, not loudly or into the same level of discussion that has gotten completely out of the rails. With authority, and the charisma he has developed as a peacemaker. He uses that in this. How I will play the character is up to the director. But having all that in the back of my mind, that helped me portray this and I think it worked!'.
The papacy has been an institution that billions of people, throughout humanity, have looked to for guidance and instruction. However, whether it be led by popes who have participated in sinful acts or popes who have tried to follow the laws of God, the Catholic Church has been enshrouded by controversy and debate. 'Conclave' , a film that explores the different archetypes of people that make up the College of Cardinals, goes into the territory of uncertainty when it comes to faith. Is the papacy truly an institution to serve the people, or is to serve those who are part of it? Speaking with Carlos Diehz, one can understand that this film truly tries to show that the Catholic Church is an organization that is human. It has errors and faults. It allows for people such as Benitez and Tedesco to coexist. It is made up of good and bad parts. It is human. Although it has tried to maintain a certain image over its thousands of years of history, it is not perfect. However, there will always be people that will try to make the world a better place through God and through the papacy. Related