On "Forbes Newsroom," Don Clemmer, a writer and former staffer with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, discussed the film 'Conclave'
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00:00another one of the issues that has come up in the last few days uh the survivors network for those
00:06abused by priests has called for the next pope to have no history of covering up sexual abuse
00:12and to also call for a zero tolerance policy is there any cardinal who fits those parameters in
00:18your view i don't think i could definitively rule anybody out or in uh just having not look closely
00:29at the the those records um but i i think it the the thing that comes to mind was uh during the 2013
00:40election uh one of the u.s cardinals noted um that the new pope has to be free in the sense of like
00:50his decisions are his own um but i but i got the sense in that that he it was also a reference to
00:57past decisions like that that that would be something that would impede his governance
01:03greatly and and and be devastating to the the credibility of of the church and i mean we've
01:12lived with um that incredible fallout and the incredible harm that was done and um that has
01:20touched the church at the highest levels of its governance and and rightly so
01:24earlier in this conversation i think i mentioned the betting markets i checked polymarket before we
01:31started which was not a factor the last time there was a conclave but pietro perolin is at 30 percent
01:39in the american betting markets uh luis antonio tagle toggle the um filipino cardinal he's at uh 24
01:46percent and matteo zupi i think one of those italian contenders is at 10 and no new pope in 2025 had less
01:55than one percent but nonetheless still had some betting money it's a little wild to talk about
02:00betting markets when we talk about you know something as centuries old as the process for
02:06choosing a new pope but don what do you make of the fact that the betting markets are weighing in and
02:11and what do you make of those odds i i mean people are fascinated by by the catholic church as an
02:17institution it's like americans in the the the british royal family in some ways uh and and it
02:25and and the pope is such a visible i mean figurehead in the best sense of of a global religious tradition
02:33uh so i mean human nature being what it is yeah people wonder people speculate and those are those
02:39are interesting names i mean that two of them are italians and like that hasn't happened in over
02:46for well over 40 years uh paralyne was brought into the vatican early uh he's a diplomat uh was a a
02:54favorite of pope francis he's only 70 years old uh and uh really kind of oversaw a restoration of the
03:04vatican's vatican's diplomatic mojo if you will that they they they became more of an emphasis again
03:11and uh engage in some you know pretty dicey and ambitious projects like the the agreement with china
03:17and uh um bridging a little bit of a thaw between the u.s and cuba during the the later obama years so
03:25that um so he's he's and he's been in the vatican for all of francis's tenure so that
03:33again a diplomat could be a way forward uh mateo zupi uh one piece i read i mean he's he's a diocesan
03:42archbishop but one piece i read on him was that he has written favorably of both outreach to the lgbtq
03:50community and the latin mass and the the argument being that he could you know be some kind of bridge
03:56figure who kind of holds all of the complexity of this you know vast tradition in himself and
04:03that's ultimately the pope's job is to be a ministry of unity that you know every bishop
04:09on the planet could say i'm in communion with the bishop of rome and therefore i'm a catholic bishop
04:13like that is the job and the pope then carrying the catholic tradition into each moment in history
04:21and uh kind of uh kind of mediating that encounter that's an interesting perspective i have one final
04:30question for you we've used the word conclave lowercase c but of course conclave uppercase c was
04:36an academy award-winning film for folks who have seen the movie may not have grown up in the catholic
04:42faith and are now following the headlines how much of that movie is accurate and will be unfolding in
04:49the coming days and or how careful should people be and if they watch it tonight and should they not
04:55assume that what they watched on screen is what's going to happen in in rome soon um definitely some
05:02oversimplifications and maybe some amping up of the palace intrigue uh i enjoyed the movie perfectly
05:08and i see we're both wearing our cardinalatial red today and uh it there were elements of it that
05:16were almost a little chilling as like a future history in terms of um the way they talked about
05:22the recently deceased pope suggested that he was a man with of wisdom who believed in complexity of
05:28issues and it just just you know moved the church forward um but you know are there going to be
05:36rather hard-hitting conversations behind the scenes sure like they they they have a big decision ahead
05:42of them and these are these are real people for better or worse and uh and they they've got they've
05:49got a job to do um yeah was it oversimplified sure but um but a fascinating portrayal i lied that
06:00was my penultimate question my final question is do we know how long the conclave will last is there
06:06a date by which we can expect to for sure have a decision uh that would be another one of those
06:12fools errands uh you had conclaves in the 20th century go from as few as three rounds of balloting
06:20so after every round they burn the ballots in their smoke and uh to like eight or nine i believe in the
06:261958 uh conclave where they really had no idea where to go after pious the 12th it all worked out
06:33um in the 21st century they've lasted about two days four rounds of voting for benedict the 16th
06:39five rounds of voting for francis that would be considered pretty fast and i think a lot of that
06:45is owed to the fact that they do engage in serious discernment and discussion ahead of it um so that
06:52they've got it crystallized in their mind like okay we know what we need to do come holy spirit write the
06:58name down uh and that's that's key