Two Popes - Fictional Movie Narratives can be Useful

The Francis Effect.  It has been huge.  One small piece of it is an uptick in applicants for the priesthood.  The most recent applicant whose psychological testing I completed tied his interest in reaffirming his faith to seeing Pope Francis when he last came to the United States.  Francis is, as they say, a rock star – but a weird kind of rock star.  His fame is based on being self-effacing rather than self-aggrandizing.  He espouses a church for and by the people rather than one that serves the priesthood.  He emulates the Christ that he, as the head of the church, represents.

The film The Two Popes centers on a fictional account of a series of conversations between Pope Benedict XVI (Played by Anthony Hopkins) and the future Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce).  The conversations did not take place, but the dramatization allows us to take a peak at the shifts that occurred in the church as the result of the resignation of Benedict and the election of Francis.  This view is a personal perspective, abeit an informed personal perspective, from the screenwriter, Anthony McCarten and the director Fernando Meirelles.

This post is also a personal appraisal of that enactment, so you should know a little bit about me and the perspective that I bring to it.  I was raised an Episcopalian and I teach at a Jesuit University.  Before working at a Jesuit University, I started to learn about the Catholic Church from a liberal psychologist friend who is a Benedictine Hermit.  This was before the time of Francis.  My friend, who was no fan of the Jesuits, was concerned about the direction of the church.  He felt that it was in the hands of men who were out of touch with what Catholics were truly concerned about.  A priest in Nicaragua echoed these concerns when Benedict was Pope, saying that the Pope was surrounded by “Crows” who were cackling to him and distracting him from the true needs and mission of the church.

The film opens with the election of Benedict.  This serves the function of immersing us in church protocol.  For Catholics, and those who follow the church, my guess is that this feels comfortable or even comforting as Pope John Paul II, who has died, is mourned and a new Pope is chosen by election of the Cardinals from among their own ranks.  The ritual of the black and white smoke – black if no new pope has been chosen, white when one finally is – is explained by newscasters so that, for those in the audience who are new to the ritual, they can understand it.  Benedict is the “conservative” candidate choice, while Bergoglio is pitted against him, something that some sources see as an invented controversy, but it is one that foreshadows the action.  The action is also foreshadowed by the location of the vote – it takes place, as it always does, in the Sistine Chapel.

Benedict and Bergoglio are both Cardinals at the beginning of the film.  Much has been made of Francis being the first Jesuit Pope, and there is a very good reason a Pope has never been a Jesuit before.  To become a Pope, you have to be a Cardinal, to become a Cardinal, you have to become a Bishop.  To become a bishop, well, you have to nominated.  When Ignatius Loyola started the Jesuits, he recruited very smart and capable men to serve in his order, an order that he dedicated to education.  The Church, badly in need of the reformation that Loyola and others were putting in place – in part in response to the protestant movement started by Luther - had many priests who were marginally competent.  The Pope saw that Loyola had many good priests in his order and asked Loyola to nominate a few to become Bishops so that the church could get healthier.  Loyola told the Pope he would get back to him about that.

When Loyola did get back to him, he told the Pope that giving him priests to become Bishops would not be in the best interests of the order, and therefore would not be good for the “Greater Glory of God,” or “Magus”, and he refused.  They were Loyola's priests, so the Pope couldn’t override him, but he was furious, and the Jesuits are the only order that have to swear their fealty to the Pope as part of their ordination.  And they are the only order that almost never lets one of their priests become a Bishop.  It is considered bad form within the order to promote oneself – one would only get “promoted” to being a Bishop if the head of the order tapped you – and that tap almost never comes.

After Benedict is installed, we fast forward seven years and Bergoglio is more and more disaffected with the Church and with his role as a Cardinal in it.  He wants to step down and sends letters to the Pope requesting the opportunity to talk about this, but they are never answered.  Frustrated, he books a flight to see Benedict, even though he hasn’t been invited, and then finds out that Benedict does now want to see him.  (The plot, including this bit, from here forward is apparently all constructed, though most of the historical material about their lives referred to in the dialogue between the two turns out to be reasonably factual).

When Bergoglio arrives in Rome, he makes his way to the Pope’s summer castle and makes his case to retire and return to being a parish priest.  As he does this he talks about why being an Archbishop feels more and more out of step with his own experience of what he has been called to do by God.  Benedict refuses to accept his resignation.  Benedict explains that his resignation would be seen as a rebuke of Benedict and all that he stands for.  And we have heard that this is the case.  Bergoglio has a rebuttal, frequently with a scripture quote attached, to every statement that Benedict makes about what the Church is becoming.  We get it that Bergoglio is a malcontent and his leaving would be experienced by many as a moral condemnation of the Pope and of the church as a whole.  But we also resonate with his plain speaking style and the scripture passages that he quotes.

After an afternoon spent in the garden arguing, Benedict retires to eat alone, as he always does.  Bergoglio “joins” him by eating alone as well.  They then get together for social time.  They look for interests they might have in common.  Bergoglio loves soccer, but Benedict has no taste for it.  Finally Benedict entertains Bergoglio by playing the piano.  Benedict catches Bergoglio out by pretending not to know the cultural significance of the Abbey Road studio where he once made a recording.  There is a sense of play and a sense of two men getting to know each other.  Bergoglio brings the letter with him, but Benedict ignores it and refuses to talk about it.  He does encourage Bergoglio, though, to tell him about how he came to the Church, and Bergoglio talks about his love for a woman, Maria, and the fated calling that he heard, and how he joined the Jesuits and warmly describes his relationship with his formation director.

Meanwhile, Benedict is embroiled in a scandal having to do with leaked papers about the papal finances.  His chief minister in charge of finances is arrested.  Benedict is called back to Rome and Bergoglio joins him in his helicopter.  There is more playful play between them and some disapproving glances from Bergoglio about the trappings of wealth and power that go along with being Pope.

On arrival, Benedict asks to meet with Bergoglio in the Sistine Chapel.   This is an incredible place for them to meet.  It is, as we know from the beginning of the film, the place where Popes are elected.  It is also one of the great artworks in history – Michelangelo’s ceiling is a masterpiece.  So much so that it overshadows the great frescoes on the walls by other giants of the renaissance.  And there is a tension between the walls and the ceiling that mirror the tension between Benedict and Bergoglio.

The frescoes on the walls connect the stories of the Old Testament to Jesus, clearly making the case for Jesus as God’s chosen one, the Messiah.  They then go on to show Jesus handing the keys of the kingdom to Peter and from him, the first Pope, to all the Popes that follow.  This is the pictorial proof that the Pope speaks as the leader of the one “Catholic and apostolic church” that was referred to in the Nicene creed that I recited as a child in the Episcopal church.

 The ceiling, though, is a celebration of Human Beings in all of his and her glory as an incarnation of God.  And the first man is made, front and center, in God's image.  The ceiling speaks to the humanity of every one of us – and points out our failings, our weaknesses – the things for which we will be damned – and our triumphs – including the very earthy bodies that are on display.  The ceiling is a celebration of the glory of the diverse individuals we are, each in a powerful reflection of some aspect of the creator.  The ceiling is about the actions of humans, what they have made of themselves – not what they have inherited.

Benedict calls Bergoglio here to this sacred space to tell him a secret.  A secret that Bergoglio must keep.   The secret is that the Pope will step down – not unprecedented – it happened 900 years ago – and he would like Bergoglio to take over for him.  Now this is a grand and, I think, fantasy laden moment.  First of all, Benedict can’t appoint his successor.  We started the movie with the process.  But more importantly, Benedict, before he was Pope, was a man, Ratzinger; a lifelong scholar from Germany, who is so deeply embedded in an authoritarian mindset that this would be a true reformation for him as a person.

The movie proposes that Benedict has, indeed, changed.  Benedict lets Bergoglio know that he is planning to step down and, in a reversal of roles, Bergoglio tells him that he can’t do this.  The Papacy is, he says, bigger than a person.  He says it is Benedict’s job to stay in the Church.  He is mimicking back some of the objections that Benedict was offering him 24 hours earlier.  But Benedict is insistent – and insistent that Bergoglio take on the Papacy himself.

Bergoglio begs off.  He can’t do it.  He was the head of the Jesuits in Argentina during the “Dirty War”, which was a rule by a ruthless military junta in which many people were “disappeared” – they were killed and dropped from airplanes flying high enough over the seas that their remains were destroyed on impact.  One of Bergoglio’s chemistry professors was disappeared, despite his efforts.  More personally damning, he renounced two priests, including his formation director, when they refused to follow his and the junta’s orders to shut down a collective for the poor.  Without the protection of the church, the now ex-priests were tortured.  Bergoglio, meanwhile, to protect the rest of the Jesuits, was seen as colluding with the junta.

When Benedict asks about the outcome of all of this, Bergoglio acknowledges that he has done penance by serving as a parish priest for ten years, and that his formation director has forgiven him and performed mass with him, but acknowledges that the other priest has not and he feels deeply guilty about his actions.  Benedict offers him absolution.

About this time, the tourists come into the chapel.  Benedict and Bergoglio beat a hasty retreat into the sacristy.  There they continue their discussion.  Benedict states that he no longer hears God.  He also notes that he reassigned a known pedophilic priest to new parishes after it was discovered that he was molesting children in one place – inflicting him, in the process, on other children and Bergoglio is horrified. Benedict formally asks Bergoglio to hear his confession.  He starts, but then we don’t hear all of it as his voice fades.  There are, I guess, some things we just shouldn’t hear…

The high point in the film, for me, then occurs.  Bergoglio and Benedict emerge from the sacristy and the gruff and retiring Pope Benedict is immersed in a sea of people, people who adore him and want to take selfies with him.  He embraces this, under the watchful eye of Bergoglio who protects Benedict from his underlings who would whisk him off to his next duties.  We then see the coronation of Bergoglio as Francis, who refuses the Red Papal cape and Shoes as he makes his way to greet the world, saying the carnival is over.  A year later, the two Popes are seen together sharing the joy and agony of watching Germany defeat Argentina in the world cup.

As much as I think this film does not portray the truth of what happened between Benedict and Bergoglio, it does portray what should have happened.  And it portrays a shift in an institution that has seemed hopelessly mired in institutional muck and completely divorced from the congregation it was created to serve.  It portrays a sea change – but I think that institutional inertia is likely to turn that into a bit of a shift rather than an about face.  We will see how long one man’s vision can inform the formation of an institution.

I think the film offers a tremendously charitable view of Benedict.  It portrays him as someone who is aware of his shortcomings – and is able to not only acknowledge them but to embrace someone with a seemingly opposite view – but one that he can see is based on a devout and true vision of the church – one that he, an isolated and very smart boy – was never able to achieve within himself or the church he shepherded, but one that he, too, would like to participate in.  But Benedict did not believe he would change his own spots to be the leader – someone else would have to lead with a vision that he acknowledged to be superior but could not live.

If this is anything like what happened, then Benedict belongs in that rare and small class of people – a class that Dora Maria Tellez in Nicaragua pointed out includes George Washington and Nelson Mandela – people who worked hard to acquire power and then worked equally hard to walk away from it. A very small class of people who are able to see the office as greater than themselves.  Based on this film, Benedict is every bit the leader that Francis is.  Of course, it is also the case that Benedict was embroiled in scandal and needed to get himself and the Church out from under it.  There may have been no other way to do that than to resign.  But in so far as even a part of him realized the opportunity to have a leader like Bergoglio take the reins of the institution is true, that is a testament to a very impressive legacy – one that also includes all of those things that he confessed to and that we couldn’t hear – and those that we could.

This film, then, is a story not just of two Popes, but of two remarkable men.  Men who have worked to achieve power, but also recognize that the purpose of the power is for a greater good – and that the path towards that good is one that can best be trod by following in the footsteps of Christ, the person from whom they have inherited the keys.  Together they are portrayed as uniting the seemingly disparate depictions of the Sistine chapel.  They respect the legacy that they together share enough to have it reflect what it is that they and the congregations they lead can aspire to becoming.  Even given that the path towards this action is certainly less clear than the movie portrays it to be, this vision should give us pause – and hope – that we can, at least for moments, transcend those forces that would prevent us becoming who we might be.

The film is also based, from a psychoanalytic perspective then, on the ability of an ego ideal - a beacon of truth - to keep us oriented.  Though Benedict and Bergoglio have very different visions of the Church, they share a love of God - and of the idealized Son of God.  It is this idealized vision - one that is depicted perhaps most movingly on the front wall of the Sistine Chapel, in the form of Christ separating the sinners from the saints in the Last Judgement, that perhaps brings these men together.  They are, like all of us, fallen.  They have committed not just small sins, but big ones in the process of navigating their lives.  These sins have been shaped by who they are and have shaped who they have become.  And yet, this movie maintains, it is possible for them - and by inference us - to rise above our ourselves - above who it is that we have been - and to radically revision ourselves.  Though the analyst in me thinks that process is more complex and difficult than the one depicted here, there is something miraculous about the power of the ideal to move us.

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