In Vatican City, the first day of the conclave – during which over a hundred cardinals gather to elect the next leader of the Catholic Church – is winding down. For billions of people across the world, all eyes will be on the famed Sistine Chapel chimney, where the color of smoke will signify a new chosen pope.
For others, all eyes are on Pope Crave – the premier stan account of the Oscar winning film Conclave.
The Edward Berger-directed film, released late last year, stars Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini. Based on a novel of the same name, the plot is steeped in palace intrigue as the cardinals vote for the next pope — and navigate the tension between more progressive leaders and their traditional, and bigoted, counterparts.
The film has garnered a devoted fandom of the type usually seen for pop stars and anime. Conclave memes have flooded on social media: fan edits soundtracked by Charli XCX’s “Sympathy Is a Knife,” Drag Race mashups, fan art and duets that compare the gossipy men of the Catholic Church to the Plastics of Mean Girls — all with a loving mix of sincerity and irony.
One of the sharpest and most popular corners of Conclave Hive is Pope Crave, with a name that’s a spin on the pop culture updates account Pop Crave.
“It’s a great film,” the anonymous admin of Pope Crave, who is an artist, explains to KQED in an interview. “I could watch Conclave one time and just focus on the sound design. I can watch Conclave one time just focusing on the cinematography. Conclave again, just costuming. It’s really rotating at 360 degrees in my head.”
Pope Crave goes beyond memes; the account created a zine, red wax seal and all, based on the film. Now in its second run, it’s already raised $50,000 (and projected to raise even more) for charities for organizations like the Intersex Human Rights Fund, Freedom Fund and Librarians and Archivists with Palestine. While Pope Crave’s admin is not Catholic, the second editor of the zine is a queer Catholic in ministry.
Between creating the zine, posting through Conclave’s Oscar campaign and now covering an actual conclave in Gen Z-friendly ways that major media outlets wouldn’t touch, Pope Crave has been busy. So busy, in fact, that it’s taken on a correspondent. (“If I didn’t have a job, I would absolutely be in Rome right now,” the admin says.)
Enter Adrianna McCain, a standup comedian from Pleasanton who was on vacation in Vatican City on the eve of the conclave. KQED spoke with the admin as well as McCain about covering a historic world event for the extremely online drama-loving fans of Pope Crave.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. There will be spoilers for Conclave (the movie).
What’s the vibe like in Rome and Vatican City right now?
McCain: Rome has been incredibly busy just as it is, because this is what’s called a Jubilee year. But people did say that they expect Vatican City probably to be a little bit busier during the election.
Do you actually have a press pass?
McCain: No, no, no. It was a joke that they tweeted out. I took notes, like, “Here are the things that I have observed. These are things that people I’ve talked to have said.” I do not have a press pass. I did not go to journalism school. I am not a real reporter. I made sure to take pictures. I also did not speak to any clergy. They wouldn’t have talked to me to begin with. I am so sorry to disappoint.
I ended up seeing a cardinal walking around in Rome. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got to be weird. Let me take a picture.” But I understand that that’s a person. I was like [to Pope Crave], “Please don’t post their actual face.” (Pope Crave pasted pictures of Ralph Finnes over the cardinal’s face to hide his identity. —ed.)
I am just nosy. That is really what it is. I just want to learn. I just wanna know what’s going on. I just wanted the tea.
You are serving a very niche audience, though! Conclave stans, the very online. What do you think people are looking for from your updates?
McCain: I think they want to see the action. Really any kind of pageantry involved.
I think people are going to want to see the smoke come out of the chimney. I learned from a tour guide today that the chimney that they put up is actually taken down when the election is actually happening, which I thought was very interesting. It pretty much only exists when smoke is going to be coming out of it.
I think it’s really cool to be just involved in this weird way, with these cool people who have this hyperfixation with the Catholic Church in a way that, I think, even the Pope himself would have been baffled by.
Pope Crave: Memes. Excellent memeing.
Basically, the same approach we had towards the Oscars is the same approach for when I will be memeing the actual papal conclave. We’re gonna have a fun time memeing and hopefully we’re going to be memeing to a progressive Pope. If it’s a fascist Pope, there’s no memes. There’s no more memes coming from the account.
Let’s talk about the movie for a bit. What drew you to it? What sort of sparked that hyperfixation?
Pope Crave: I’m also not Catholic. I’m Buddhist, a pretty bad Buddhist, but I am Buddhist.
I normally don’t like films like Conclave — films that give you hope. I like movies that make me upset at the end. Films that actually question or challenge reality, as opposed to like these narratives that make you feel good. But I watched it while I was doing a lot of volunteering work with elections … and I was really deep into it. So I trauma-bonded to Conclave. Like when the credits rolled and that score happened, I’m like, “Oh my God, this was like a deeply, earnestly sincere film.”
It took me a week to rotate Conclave in my head, to figure out how I felt about the film. As I was election volunteering, I kept coming back to Conclave as a coping mechanism. Like, I want to believe in this world. It’s crazy that they imagine this insanely beautiful, progressive future that I don’t live in.
I feel like if I hadn’t seen it in that specific time period, I would have still liked Conclave. I just would’ve been a little bit more normal about it.
McCain: So I watched this movie with a couple of my friends when it first came out. I was the only one that really liked it … but they made an argument about it, which seemed like almost a fantasy.
They were like, “This is never how the Catholic Church would end up. With somebody making an impassioned speech, and also it turns out that this person is of an even more marginalized identity that people might potentially have a problem with within the Church. (The pope elected at the end of the film is intersex. —ed.)
I thought to myself, “Why can’t it be that way?” Because I don’t know if the Catholic Church itself is ever going to be a truly progressive institution. I don’t see why we can’t hope for something a little bit better.
How do you think Conclave got this stan-like fandom that inspires so much transformative interaction? It makes sense to me, but I have a hard time pinning it down.
McCain: I would describe myself as culturally Catholic. Very much a lapsed Catholic. I don’t really think I’m breaking any ground here when I say that the Catholic Church has had its fair share of problems.
But to see people kind of reclaim – especially so many queer fans, specifically … like queer people have been so marginalized by the Catholic Church – to see them kind of find their own way of reclaiming Catholicism is very cool.
There are some things about the Catholic Church that I think a lot of queer people are drawn to. So much of it is the pageantry. A couple of years ago, there was the Heavenly Bodies theme [at the Met Gala]. If the Catholic Church didn’t want gay people to be so interested in it, they should stop slaying so hard.
I think queer people also may have been drawn specifically to Pope Francis, because he was so involved with this message of peace. Especially towards the very end of his life.
McCain: As for Conclave itself, let me just also say: People love Stanley Tucci, people love Ralph Fiennes, people love intrigue. I have described it many times as Gossip Girl set in the Vatican. It is people trying to find the truth to these rumors. Isabella Rossellini is a queen. There’s a lot about that that people are also really drawn to.
Pope Crave: You can’t ignore the fact that Catholicism has a baller aesthetic. And it has a lot of history behind it, for better and for worse.
Someone else talked to me about this, so I can’t claim credit for this, but it’s really fascinating how Conclave [swings between] low culture to high culture, to low culture to high-culture low culture.
Robert Harris [the author of Conclave] kind of writes these airport novel thrillers, and then it becomes a prestige drama with Edward Berger and Ralph Fiennes. At the same time, it’s like a drag performance of the Catholic church. And when you [the fans] are making Old Man Yaoi, you are dragging the drag.
The film itself – even Catholicism itself – is really interesting, in that you’re seeing non-traditional depictions of masculinity. These are men in dresses who are really about interiority and faithfulness and sincerity, but also at the same time doing vape hits and being full-ass divas. So on every level, there’s just so much subversion, and the transformative nature of that is inherent to the text.
Are you following any potential candidate for the papacy? Do you have any hopes for the outcome?
McCain: I certainly would like to have another more liberal-minded Pope. Let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s still going to be a representative of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church is in many, many different ways [behind], especially on stances like people being queer, and women, and abortion. I really worry that they’ll end up taking somebody who is much more conservative given the way that just world politics is right now.
[Luis Antonio Tagle] from the Philippines seemed really cool. I’m just really hoping for somebody who will continue Pope Francis’s legacy. Really preaching world peace and people coming together, and all the things that the Catholic Church could be.
It’s obviously such an influential institution. I hope that they influence people for the better.
Pope Crave: I want the next one to excommunicate JD Vance.
In our hearts, we have our progressive candidates we love for the Church, but we also know what’s the realistic route. Then we have the nightmare edition: “We don’t think it’s going to [be this person].” But you know 2025. No one has predicted any minute of this year.
We’ve been following it, but we are not the source for finding out everything about each different candidate. Don’t go to Pope Crave for the rigorous biographical breakdown of the candidates.
