Coup de théâtre and the conclave

Coup de théâtre, as the French say, or colpo di scena in Italian, is an unexpected turn in a play or a film, often applied to real life when surprising developments unfold suddenly and to dramatic effect, making life imitate art.

The recent movie, Conclave, went for one of these—and it’s tough to say whether it was trying too hard or a little too dans le nez, or perhaps, paradoxically, a little of both—and fell flat, if you ask me.

Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it. [Editor’s note: Conclave was reviewed on April 4, 2025, for CWR by Sean Fitzpatrick.]

With the eyes of the whole world on Rome this week and the worldwide body of Catholic faithful waiting on tenterhooks for white smoke, I thought I’d sketch out three highly unlikely scenarios that would be good for some coup de théâtre.

A pope who isn’t “Roman”

The pope is always “Roman” in the sense that he is the bishop of Rome—though it is more precise to say the bishop of Rome is the pope, and more precise still to speak of the pope of Rome, since “pope” is an honorific and there is a pope of Alexandria, too (though he doesn’t have anything like the powers attached to Peter’s see of Rome)—but it could happen that the cardinals elect a man who is not of the Latin Church.

(Sticklers will note that popes like St. Paul VI and others were Milanese, hence Ambrosian—and Achille Ratti, who became Pius XI, was a scholarly cultor of the Ambrosian Rite, and that there are other cases to quibble, but … let a fellow have his fun, will you?)

There was a stretch during the 7^th and 8^th centuries when we had quite a few “Greek” popes, owing to Byzantine political influence in Italy. Several of them even sought the consent of the Byzantine exarch in Ravenna—the last Western capital of The Thing That Used To Be The Roman Empire—the last one being Gregory III (of Syrian extraction) in AD 731.

So, it could happen.

It could also happen that I be struck by lightning while sitting in my rocking chair in my living room on a cloudless day.

The chances of a fellow from one of the Eastern rites being elected is slim, in other words, but there are Eastern cardinals among the electors: Cardinal Louis Sako is Patriarch of the Chaldeans, Cardinal Baselios Cleemis is Patriarch of the Syro-Malankara Church, Cardinal George Koovakad is Patriarch of the Syro-Malabar Church, Cardinal Berheneyesus Demerew Souraphiel is archbishop of Addis Abeba and head of the Ethiopian Catholic Church, and Cardinal Mykola Bychok is a bishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (the Major Archbishop of which isn’t a cardinal, but more about that later).

Such a choice would be interesting for several reasons, not least of which is that the bishop of Rome is Patriarch of the West (an Eastern Patriarch elected to the See of Rome would lose his Eastern titles when he accepted the election), and a lot of his governing powers are patriarchal at least in the mode of their exercise. Benedict didn’t use the title after 2006, but Francis quietly reinstated it last year.

It would also be interesting because the pope would celebrate Mass and other liturgies in the Roman rite, so he would have to learn it if he didn’t already know it, and even if he were to come to the office not a total stranger to the Roman way, it would take a while and some effort to learn how to pray it from the inside, out.

There’s lots else to say about such an eventuality. Suffice it to say it would make not only for great colpo di scena, but also for some very interesting times.

Likelihood: Don’t hold your breath.

A non-cardinal gets the nod

Not everyone realizes that the cardinals don’t have to pick one of their own. They almost always do—or better, they almost always have, ever since the cardinals became the sole electors of the pope, and that happened at the rough midpoint of the 11^th century—but they don’t have to pick one of their number, strictly speaking.

There are lots of good practical reasons for having cardinals and there are lots of good practical reasons for the cardinals to choose one of their number, but there’s no law against them looking outside the College and they have occasionally in the past.

It is good for the pope to know something about how the Roman machinery of government works, and it is good for the cardinals to have some feel for the fellow they’re electing, so keeping it in-house is basically a matter of best practice. Adriaan Florensz Boeyens, who became Adrian VI in 1522 when he was elected in absentia, he was already a cardinal. Giovanni Montini, who would become Pope Paul VI in 1963, reportedly garnered at least a few votes in the 1958 conclave that elected Angelo Roncalli Pope John XXIII.

Adriaan wasn’t in Rome but was a cardinal, while Montini wasn’t a cardinal but was an old Roman hand who had served in the Secretariat of State for thirty years before he went to Milan in 1954, and wasn’t a cardinal only because he had declined the red hat Pius XII had offered him.

Going outside the college has never been a common occurrence, but there was a century or so between the second half of the 13th century and the tail end of the 14^th, when it happened six times. The last of them was Urban VI, whose election kicked off the Western Schism, so it isn’t difficult to imagine why subsequent conclaves haven’t gone that way again.

Likelihood: I’ll eat my hat.

The anti-Francis

I don’t mean to make this whimsical “What if?” exercise cum light-hearted jaunt through papal history into a political statement, so, let me explain.

Like him or not, Francis was a talker who didn’t mind much what he said, or at least didn’t mind being misunderstood. He spoke like a man of big ideas, and he had many of them, but he wasn’t exactly what the management psychologists in HR consultancy call a “detail-oriented” fellow.

Francis was lots of things, but he was not an institutionalist when it came to his modus gubernandi, his way of governing. He preferred an informal “kitchen cabinet” of advisors to the professional churchmen of the Roman curia, and frequently governed by sheer force of personality, rather than the ordinary means of government developed over centuries.

Now, the Romans have a saying: Un papa grasso, ne segue uno magro, which means, “A skinny pope follows a fat pope,” and is often abbreviated to “fat pope, thin pope.” So, conventional wisdom would have the cardinals pick a fellow of different personality and disposition.

Here, however, I am talking about something a little different. I am talking about a candidate picked with a view to sending a message: “This time, the carnival really is over.”

Francis was elected with a mandate to reform the curia, but set himself on a mission to revolutionize the Church. He eventually delivered a paper reform of the Roman governing apparatus, which did not put the outfit in form for action or solve the financial problems that erupted into full-blown crisis on his watch.

All of this is certainly going to be on the cardinals’ minds—Leo X, more recently Benedict XVI, and even the aforementioned Adrian VI are only a few of the popes who were given reform mandates or set about reforming work, only to fail at it—and there is a very real sense in which the work of reform is never done.

The next guy is going to have a lot of reforming to do, and the cardinals could speak volumes about what they want from the next guy, just by their choice of him. I’m not going to drop names, so, don’t even ask.

This fellow, however, would be a dark horse candidate, probably not on anyone’s list of papabile. He could be a quiet type, but careful when he speaks and eloquent, steely, and relatively young.

Likelihood: Well, give me garlic and call me smelly.

Per absurdum

Come to think of it, there is one ecclesiastical personage who ticks all the boxes: Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

He is the leader of a self-governing (sui iuris) ritual Church, he doesn’t wear the red hat, and he is not only the polar opposite of Francis in terms of his character and temperament but also had an uneasy relationship with Francis.

Shevchuk knows Rome and is familiar with Roman ways, and—more importantly—is a known quantity among the cardinals as well as a leader with a global profile owing to the war raging in his country.

In fact, he is widely renowned as a hero of the faith.

Now, I don’t think he has a chance, not a snowball’s in hell, and anyway the cardinals would have to send one of their number to carry him news of the election—though he could probably be reached by phone—and he would have a real time of it getting into the city.

If I were Shevchuk, I would fly by private charter into Trieste and then switch planes, land at Ciampino in the dead of night and make the city by unmarked car. I’d also make sure I knew and trusted both the planes and the pilot.

Likelihood: Now I am writing a movie treatment.

(Coup de théâtre, indeed.)