In Catholicism, a Discordant Duet
The pages of a large Gospel, lying on the unadorned wooden coffin, fluttered in the breeze. Cardinals in red and bishops in purple stood nearby, and millions of mourners filled St. Peter’s Square and surrounding streets for the vast spectacle that was Pope John Paul II’s funeral in 2005.
The image of those pages, viewed from above on the square’s colonnade, were rife with symbolism: the wind-ruffled Gospel represented the Holy Spirit. Or so observers had learned while watching the pageantry of the funeral and the conclave to come.
Footage of that image shows up in the opening scenes of the dramedy “The Two Popes,” which began streaming on December 21 on Netflix. The film depicts the election of John Paul’s successor, Benedict XVI; Benedict’s shocking resignation; and the election of the current pontiff, Francis.
In the movie, the German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Anthony Hopkins) is elected Pope Benedict XVI and the stage is set for the ultimate pontifical buddy picture — a series of imagined conversations between Benedict and Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), who will become his successor, Francis.
It’s a joy to listen in as these two formidable churchmen joust over different views of Catholicism, admit spiritual doubts, joke about the Beatles, seek absolution from each other and end up drinking beer together, just two old popes watching soccer on a couch.
The screenwriter, Anthony McCarten (whose credits include the Winston Churchill tale “Darkest Hour”), said he based his script on research from secondary sources, archives and interviews. “The potential I sensed in this story was a debate, an almost Talmudic disputation, between a progressive and a conservative,” he said. “It spoke to the broader conversation raging in society at present.”
About a quarter of the papal dialogue is verbatim from the words or writings of the two men, he said. The conversations open as they stroll through the gardens of the pope’s summer residence in
Castel Gandolfo. Bergoglio has flown to Rome to press Benedict to grant his wish to resign as archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Mr. McCarten does a fine job of telegraphing their politics — traditionalist, protective of doctrine, inward-looking vs. open to the modern world, compassionate and flexible — and encapsulates the debate that continues in the church.
Benedict grills the cardinal, expressing irritation with his supposedly sympathetic statements about married priests (“misquoted,” the Bergoglio character says) and homosexuality (“taken out of context”), and with the cardinal’s giving communion to divorced Catholics (not denied) and popularity among the common people.
Bergoglio then delivers a pointed critique of the Benedict papacy: “We have spent these last years disciplining any one who disagrees with our line on divorce, on birth control, on being gay, while our planet was being destroyed, while inequality grew like a cancer.” He continues, “All the time the real danger was inside, inside with us.” That danger, he said, was the church hierarchy’s knowledge that clerics were sexually preying on children, and its failure to protect these children.
Publicly, Benedict said failing strength “of mind and body” led him to believe he could no longer fulfill his ministry. The film suggests he suffered a crisis of faith because of his inadequate response to the sex abuse scandal. It also hints that the burden of dealing with corruption in the Vatican was a cause.
But Mr. McCarten may have captured a deeper truth: that he came to believe that the church had to change course and that its center of gravity was shifting to Latin America, or at least outside Europe.
The film ends with the two popes watching the GermanyArgentina World Cup final in 2014. It’s a harmonious picture that will please the Vatican image-handlers. So will montages of Francis, championing the poor and oppressed.
But it’s only half the picture.