Which Conclave Character Is New Pope Robert Prevost Most Like?

It only took roughly 24 hours for Robert Prevost, the first American-born pope in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history, to be named Pope Francis’s successor. That suggests the real papal conclave was a lot less dramatic than the Oscar-winning Conclave, the 2024 film that got non-Catholics newly engaged with this year’s selection process. It’s also been reported that some cardinals even watched the movie for tips on how to navigate their own sequestered voting period.

And all that alleged research led 133 red-robed cardinals to 69-year-old Prevost, who took the name papal name Leo XIV from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica about an hour after white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney. Prevost hails from Chicago, graduated from Villanova University, and served as a longtime missionary in Peru. Given those scant biographical details, it is totally plausible that Prevost can quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off by heart or has accidentally walked by filming of The Bear.

But there is an even more pressing pop cultural question to ask in light of Prevost’s selection: which character from Conclave is the new pope most like? Before any sacrilegious objections can be made, an actual BuzzFeed quiz to determine which cardinal best matches your character already exists. (I’m Stanley Tucci’s Bellini, a character BuzzFeed brands “a spineless American liberal” whom God will “probably forgive.”) And if every single woman of legal age must ask herself if she’s a Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, or Charlotte, then this question is only fair to ask of the man set to lead the Catholic Church.

In truth, Prevost isn’t a perfect match for any of the film’s fictional contenders—but there are similarities for those who choose to look for them. (Or are asked by their editor to do so.)

Given his American background, Prevost was considered a total dark horse candidate and labeled an “outside insider” by Time magazine. That brings to mind Lucian Msamati’s Cardinal Adeyemi from Nigeria, the Conclave character who would have become the first African pope in history—had his messy personal life not interfered. As Time reported, Prevost has been called “the least American of the Americans” for his international ties, particularly to South America, where he did missionary work for a decade in Trujillo, Peru. He was later designated bishop of the Peruvian city of Chiclayo, where he served from 2014 to 2023, as reported by CNN. Prevost also holds a Peruvian passport and has been a Peruvian citizen since 2015.

Like Tucci’s Cardinal Bellini, Prevost served as a trusted confidant of his predecessor: Pope Francis, who appointed him head of the Vatican office that picks and manages new bishops across the globe. According to CBS News, Prevost “is considered a centrist, but on many social issues he’s seen as progressive, embracing marginalized groups like Francis, who championed migrants and the poor.” Prevost has also been critical on social media of another American who lobbied for the job of pope: President Donald Trump.

But while Bellini’s liberal views proved too polarizing for the fictional papacy, Prevost is viewed as more of a bridge between Francis’s more liberal ideologies and those of conservative cardinals—represented in the film by John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay and Sergio Castellitto’s Cardinal Tedesco. Described as “a balanced alternative” by The New York Times, in a 2012 speech before bishops, Prevost lambasted Western news media for promoting “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel,” citing the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

As for why front-runner Cardinal Pietro Parolin (the rough equivalent of Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence in this dream scenario) wasn’t chosen, Daniel Rober, associate professor and chair of Catholic studies at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, told Newsweek that Prevost may have been seen as “less kind of tainted by the Vatican bureaucracy.”

Taking all of that into account, as well as Prevost’s reportedly “reserved and discreet” nature, one can only conclude that, as luck would have it, our new pope is most like the fictional pope who comes out on top in Conclave: Carlos Diehz’s Cardinal Benitez, a dark horse who was secretly appointed to his position of power in Kabul by the movie’s late pope before his death.

Both men were long shots for the title but had the faith of their successive leaders. Each spent long periods serving in areas far from where they were born (in the film, Benitez gives a moving speech about leading his ministry during wartime in Congo) and symbolize unity for an institution that can be ideologically divided.

Conclave director Edward Berger previously told Vanity Fair that Benitez ultimately wins because “everyone seems to have seven agendas, egotistical agendas, except him. He comes to it from a place of purity and clarity and faith and love, and all these wonderful elements that a lot of the others have lost—including Ralph’s character.”

Perhaps this spirit is best illustrated by Prevost’s own words, given to the Vatican’s official news site, per The New York Times, last year: “The bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom,” but is “called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them, to suffer with them.”