In the closing moments of “Conclave,” Cardinal Benitez is elected Pope, taking the papal name Innocent. The film’s final reveal, however, centers not on political maneuvering or Vatican intrigue, but on a deeply personal fact about the newly elected pontiff: he was born intersex. This discovery occurs when Lawrence, the cardinal at the film’s center, learns that Benitez discovered his condition during adult surgery and has spent years grappling with it in silence. The revelation reframes the entire election not as a triumph of diplomatic pragmatism, but as a moment where the Catholic Church, historically the world’s oldest patriarchal institution, unknowingly chooses a leader whose very existence challenges its foundational teachings on gender and body.
The ending’s power lies in what it symbolizes rather than what it explicitly states. Benitez does not announce his condition to the world. Instead, Lawrence becomes the sole keeper of this secret, choosing to remain at the Vatican rather than retire, silently witnessing an institution move forward while remaining fundamentally unchanged on the surface. The film’s final image—blinds opening to reveal nuns laughing in sunlight—suggests a quiet hope for something more egalitarian to eventually emerge, even if that change remains unspoken and uncertain. Director Edward Berger was deliberate in exploring what he called “the oldest patriarchal society in the world,” making the Benitez reveal not a sensational plot twist but a meditation on institutional resistance to change.
Table of Contents
- Who Is Cardinal Benitez and Why Does His Secret Matter?
- The Journey to the Secret’s Discovery
- What Lawrence’s Choice to Stay Means for the Church
- The Symbolism of the Final Image
- Critical Response to the Reveal
- How the Ending Challenges Institutional Narratives
- The Broader Conversation About Gender and Religious Authority
Who Is Cardinal Benitez and Why Does His Secret Matter?
Cardinal Benitez enters “Conclave” as the apparent compromise candidate—progressive on peace and social issues, moderate enough to unite the College of Cardinals. He speaks multiple languages, has credibility in the developing world, and offers the appearance of a Church moving cautiously into modernity. What the cardinals voting for him do not know, and what the audience discovers only in the film’s final act, is that this candidate carries a truth that would have fundamentally altered his viability had it been public knowledge. He is intersex, having learned this fact not in childhood or adolescence but during surgical procedures in adulthood, a discovery that forced him to navigate his identity while simultaneously pursuing a vocation that offers no institutional language or acceptance for such existence.
The significance of this revelation cannot be separated from Catholic doctrine. The Church teaches that gender is fixed and binary, tied to biological sex. An intersex pope represents not merely a personal anomaly but a lived contradiction of official Church teaching—one that exists in silence at the highest level of the hierarchy. Screenwriter Peter Straughan acknowledged in interviews that crafting this reveal was “the thing I found trickiest,” suggesting the careful balance required to make it neither exploitative nor melodramatic. The secret works because it doesn’t require Benitez to be a crusader or activist; his quiet existence challenges the institution simply by being true.
The Journey to the Secret’s Discovery
The film structures its narrative so that Lawrence, the cardinal protagonist, uncovers Benitez’s truth through investigative work rather than confession. This matters because it establishes the secret as something to be discovered rather than revealed—it exists in medical records, in documented history, in the body’s reality rather than in spoken testimony. Lawrence’s discovery process mirrors the viewer’s own: we learn this information not through dramatic revelation but through the methodical uncovering of facts, much as an investigator might piece together evidence. The film trusts its audience to understand the significance without requiring Benitez to articulate his pain or struggle explicitly.
A critical limitation of keeping this secret entirely within Lawrence’s knowledge is that it prevents Benitez from ever addressing it on his own terms. The newly elected Pope Innocent remains unaware that Lawrence knows, which means his papal authority remains built partially on a deception—not one of his making, but one nonetheless. The film doesn’t resolve this tension or suggest how it might eventually be resolved. Instead, it leaves the audience with the discomfort of recognizing that even this apparent moment of progress is shadowed by institutional secrecy and the impossibility of authentic disclosure within current Church structures.
What Lawrence’s Choice to Stay Means for the Church
Lawrence faces a choice in the film’s resolution: he can retire, disappearing from Vatican politics as he originally planned, or he can remain as a cardinal, bearing witness to Pope Innocent’s papacy while guarding his secret. He chooses to stay. This decision carries weight beyond personal loyalty. By remaining, Lawrence becomes the sole person who knows the full context of Benitez’s election—not just that he was chosen, but that he carries within him a fundamental challenge to Church teachings on gender and the body.
Lawrence’s silence, therefore, is not passive; it is an active choice to remain complicit in the system while possessing knowledge that, if disclosed, would create unprecedented institutional crisis. The comparison to other whistleblower narratives is instructive. Unlike figures who expose institutional corruption or abuse, Lawrence cannot speak without destroying the man he has come to respect. The film presents this as a genuine moral bind rather than a simple question of right and wrong. His staying suggests that sometimes the most meaningful resistance within institutions is not public confrontation but quiet presence—bearing witness, protecting the person while knowing the system itself has not truly changed.
The Symbolism of the Final Image
The film’s closing shot deliberately avoids triumph or clarity. As blinds open to sunlight, the sound of nuns laughing provides a gentle, almost domestic counterpoint to the weight of what has preceded it. Director Berger chose this moment to suggest not victory but possibility—the idea that change within such an ancient institution arrives not through dramatic reform but through the accumulation of small, often invisible transformations. The laughter of nuns, often portrayed in religious cinema as ethereal or solemn, here sounds genuinely human and warm, suggesting that ordinary members of the Church might sense or embody a shift even if leadership cannot explicitly acknowledge it.
This symbolic approach distinguishes “Conclave” from more conventional political thrillers. Rather than ending with speeches, policy declarations, or public statements about reform, the film ends with an image of light and sound that requires interpretation. Some viewers will see hope in it; others may see only the same institution perpetuating itself through different means. The ambiguity is intentional. Berger resisted the temptation to provide reassurance, instead offering an image that acknowledges both the possibility of transformation and the likelihood that such transformation will remain partial and incomplete.
Critical Response to the Reveal
Film critics and industry analysts largely praised the ending as bold and thematically coherent rather than sensationalist. Publications like Screen Rant, IndieWire, and Looper noted that the Benitez reveal avoided becoming a cheap plot device or exploitation of intersex identity. Instead, reviewers recognized it as integral to the film’s exploration of institutional resistance to change and the personal cost of living authentically within systems that deny such authenticity.
The critical consensus emphasized that the reveal served the film’s thematic concerns rather than functioning as shock value. A notable limitation of critical praise, however, is that most discussions focused on the reveal’s narrative elegance rather than its broader implications for how Hollywood portrays intersex characters and experiences. The film’s strength in handling the subject matter was widely noted, yet the broader question of whether centering an intersex character’s secret pain within a mainstream thriller is ultimately progressive or simply sophisticated exploitation received less sustained attention. What remains clear from the critical record is that viewers recognized something meaningful in Benitez’s story—something that elevated “Conclave” beyond standard Vatican thriller territory.
How the Ending Challenges Institutional Narratives
Pope Innocent’s election represents progress on paper: he advocates for peace, for dialogue with other faiths, for the Church’s engagement with contemporary moral questions. His papacy will likely differ from his predecessor’s in measurable ways. Yet the film suggests that even this apparent progress is constrained by institutional structures that cannot acknowledge or accept fundamental truths about human diversity. Benitez can become pope precisely because his identity remains hidden, which means the institution’s movement toward a more inclusive future is built on exclusion and silence.
This paradox reflects real tensions within many long-established institutions. A corporation can implement progressive policies while maintaining a culture that punishes authentic disclosure. A government can expand rights on paper while communities remain unsafe for marginalized people to be visible. The film argues, through its ending, that such partial progress—necessary though it may be—comes at a cost that should not be ignored or celebrated without acknowledgment of what must remain hidden.
The Broader Conversation About Gender and Religious Authority
The Benitez character, as portrayed by actor Ralph Fiennes, forces viewers to reckon with the reality that gender-nonconforming and intersex people exist within religious institutions at every level, from laity to hierarchy, yet lack any institutional framework for acknowledgment or support. For centuries, such people have navigated religious vocations by either suppressing awareness of their own bodies or hiding their existence from institutional scrutiny. Benitez’s character articulates this reality without making it the entire focus of his story—he is a cardinal, a theologian, a political actor, a complex human whose intersex identity is one truth among many, yet one that the institution can never officially recognize.
The film was released in 2024, amid broader cultural conversations about institutional responses to gender diversity and bodily autonomy. In this context, “Conclave” offered something relatively rare in mainstream cinema: a portrait of someone navigating religious life while carrying a physical reality that official doctrine denies. Benitez did not choose to resign despite his secret; he chose to stay, to serve, to remain within an institution that could never fully see him. The film presents this choice as both courageous and tragic, offering no neat resolution but instead the image of light breaking through and, in the distance, human laughter.
