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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Spoilers for the ending of Conclave. Cardinal Vincent Benitez is elected pope before Cardinal Thomas Lawrence discovers that Benitez was born intersex. Benitez says the late pope knew and accepted him. Lawrence allows the election to stand, turning the final reveal into a test of whether the Church’s inherited categories matter more than the person chosen to lead it. The film leaves the consequences open, but its last image offers a tentative note of hope.
What happens at the end of Conclave?
Benitez emerges as a compromise candidate after the leading cardinals’ ambitions and scandals unsettle the vote. The cardinals elect him pope. Only afterward does Lawrence privately ask him about a medical appointment Benitez had made and then canceled.
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Benitez explains that surgery earlier in his life revealed internal female reproductive organs. He had considered a procedure to remove them, but decided against it, believing his body was as God made him. The film identifies Benitez as intersex. He also tells Lawrence that the late pope knew about his body and continued to support him.
Lawrence does not expose the secret or try to overturn the election. He lets the result stand. That choice closes the immediate plot while opening the film’s larger question: what should an institution do when the person it has chosen unsettles its assumptions?
#1 Best Overall
- Genre: Mystery / Suspense
- Number of Discs: 1
- Number of Tracks: 0
- Playback Duration: 121
- Rating: PG
What does the twist mean?
The election tests the cardinals’ idea of an ideal pope
The cardinals intend their vote to discern the right leader. Benitez’s election seems to settle that search, but Lawrence’s discovery puts the institution’s categories under pressure. The film’s irony is that the vote produces a pope, then asks whether the Church can accept the person it has elected.
One reading is that Lawrence’s decision reflects the film’s recurring call for doubt and humility. Screenwriter Peter Straughan has said he was drawn to Lawrence’s homily asking God for a pope who doubts. Lawrence’s response can be read as choosing restraint over a claim to certainty; the film does not state that this is the only meaning of his choice.
Berger sees a possible opening in a patriarchal institution
Director Edward Berger said the ending made him see a larger possibility in a film set inside what he called “the oldest patriarchy in the world.” He pointed to Sister Agnes, played by Isabella Rossellini, as a figure relegated to silence and service, and described the final reveal as a possible “crack in the veneer” through which future light might enter. That is Berger’s interpretation, not a promise that the institution has changed.
Berger has also cautioned against treating the movie as simply an attack on the Church: “It’s not a takedown of the church.” He described the ending as one point among the film’s broader concerns with faith, power, ambition, and political agendas. The twist matters, but it is not the whole argument.
Why does the film end with the young nuns?
After the private conversation, the film closes on three young nuns laughing and moving down the Vatican stairs. Straughan said the image suggests optimism and new hope for women who have been silent or kept in the background. Berger described it as a look toward the institution’s future and a breath of fresh air.
The scene does not show that the Church has changed or guarantee that it will. Instead, it gives an unresolved ending a cautiously hopeful direction: the possibility of a different future remains imaginable.
Is Benitez’s secret in Robert Harris’s novel?
Yes. The film adapts Robert Harris’s 2016 novel Conclave, and Harris has said the screenplay follows the book closely. The central twist comes from the novel; Harris has described it as deliberate, tied to the story’s themes, and intended to pose a larger question to the Church. The adaptation changes some character details, including Lawrence’s nationality, but preserves this reveal.
Could the twist really happen?
Not as the film presents it, based on the procedural distinction identified by America Magazine’s November 27, 2024 fact check. The movie uses real elements of a conclave, including the secluded voting setting. But while appointments in pectore are real, a cardinal appointed in pectore does not vote in a conclave. Benitez’s exact situation is fictional; the film should not be taken as a blanket guide to conclave procedure or as evidence of how the Church would respond to this scenario in real life.
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