Which ‘Conclave’ Character Is New Pope Robert Prevost Most Like?

It handiest took kind of 24 hours for Robert Prevost, the primary American-born pope within the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year historical past, to be named Pope Francis’s successor. That suggests the true papal conclave used to be so much much less dramatic than the Oscar-winning Conclave, the 2024 movie that were given non-Catholics newly engaged with this 12 months’s variety procedure. It’s additionally been reported that some cardinals even watched the film for tips about how one can navigate their very own sequestered vote casting duration.

And all that alleged analysis led 133 red-robed cardinals to 69-year-old Prevost, who took the title papal title Leo XIV from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica about an hour after white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney. Prevost hails from Chicago, graduated from Villanova University, and served as an established missionary in Peru. Given the ones scant biographical main points, it’s completely believable that Prevost can quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off by way of center or has unintentionally walked by way of filming of The Bear.

But there may be an much more urgent pop cultural query to invite in mild of Prevost’s variety: which persona from Conclave is the brand new pope maximum like? Before any sacrilegious objections will also be made, a real BuzzFeed quiz to resolve which cardinal perfect suits your persona already exists. (I’m Stanley Tucci’s Bellini, a personality BuzzFeed manufacturers “a spineless American liberal” whom God will “probably forgive.”) And if each unmarried girl of prison age will have to ask herself if she’s a Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, or Charlotte, then this query is handiest truthful to invite of the person set to steer the Catholic Church.

In fact, Prevost isn’t a great fit for any of the movie’s fictional contenders—however there are similarities for many who make a choice to search for them. (Or are requested by way of their editor to take action.)

Given his American background, Prevost used to be regarded as a complete darkish horse candidate and categorised an “outside insider” by way of Time mag. That brings to thoughts Lucian Msamati’s Cardinal Adeyemi from Nigeria, the Conclave persona who would have turn out to be the primary African pope in historical past—had his messy private existence now not interfered. As Time reported, Prevost has been referred to as “the least American of the Americans” for his global ties, in particular to South America, the place he did missionary paintings for a decade in Trujillo, Peru. He used to be later designated bishop of the Peruvian town of Chiclayo, the place he served from 2014 to 2023, as reported by way of CNN. Prevost additionally holds a Peruvian passport and has been a Peruvian citizen since 2015.

Like Tucci’s Cardinal Bellini, Prevost served as a relied on confidant of his predecessor: Pope Francis, who appointed him head of the Vatican place of job that alternatives and manages new bishops around the globe. According to CBS News, Prevost “is considered a centrist, but on many social issues he’s seen as progressive, embracing marginalized groups like Francis, who championed migrants and the poor.” Prevost has additionally been important on social media of any other American who lobbied for the activity of pope: President Donald Trump.

But whilst Bellini’s liberal perspectives proved too polarizing for the fictitious papacy, Prevost is seen as extra of a bridge between Francis’s extra liberal ideologies and the ones of conservative cardinals—represented within the movie by way of John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay and Sergio Castellitto’s Cardinal Tedesco. Described as “a balanced alternative” by way of The New York Times, in a 2012 speech ahead of bishops, Prevost lambasted Western information media for selling “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel,” mentioning the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

As for why front-runner Cardinal Pietro Parolin (the tough similar of Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence on this dream state of affairs) wasn’t selected, Daniel Rober, affiliate professor and chair of Catholic research at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, informed Newsweek that Prevost could have been noticed as “less kind of tainted by the Vatican bureaucracy.”

Taking all of that under consideration, in addition to Prevost’s reportedly “reserved and discreet” nature, one can handiest conclude that, as good fortune would have it, our new pope is maximum like the fictitious pope who comes out on most sensible in Conclave: Carlos Diehz’s Cardinal Benitez, a gloomy horse who used to be secretly appointed to his place of energy in Kabul by way of the film’s past due pope ahead of his demise.

Both males had been lengthy photographs for the name however had the religion in their leaders. Each spent lengthy classes serving in spaces a ways from the place they had been born (within the movie, Benitez offers a transferring speech about main his ministry throughout wartime in Congo) and characterize cohesion for an establishment that may be ideologically divided.

Conclave director Edward Berger prior to now informed Vanity Fair that Benitez in the end wins as a result of “everyone seems to have seven agendas, egotistical agendas, except him. He comes to it from a place of purity and clarity and faith and love, and all these wonderful elements that a lot of the others have lost—including Ralph’s character.”

Perhaps this spirit is perfect illustrated by way of Prevost’s personal phrases, given to the Vatican’s legit information website, according to The New York Times, final 12 months: “The bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom,” however is “called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them, to suffer with them.”