How Pope Crave Went From Conclave to the Conclave

What started as a bit has turned into something altogether holy.

In December 2024, artist Susan Bin co-founded Pope Crave, an X fan account dedicated to Conclave, the 2024 film starring Ralph Fiennes, and its lovingly memed awards-season run. Parodying celebrity news accounts like Pop Crave or Pop Base, Pope Crave focuses exclusively on Conclave updates, including must-see memes. Or at least it did. Now the account—which has more than 60,000 followers—is posting actual updates on the papal vacancy, and even is working with ad hoc correspondents on the ground in Rome.

Adrianna McCain just happened to be in Rome with her family the day before the conclave commenced on May 7, and “jumped at the opportunity” to help out one of her favorite accounts. She wrote to the account, offering up her services to perform a special report “vibe check” on the ground. McCain, who was raised Catholic but no longer practices, took photos outside of Saint Peter’s Basilica and asked a few locals about how busy the city would get. McCain is not a journalist, just a “very online stand-up comedian” and fan of Pope Crave. Still, she managed to do some light reporting from Vatican City. “I also took note of how many ‘real’ journalists were present. Answer: Tons,” she tells TIME via X direct message.

McCain considers Conclave to be one of her top three films of last year and calls the tense thriller “hopeful.” She says she argued with friends over whether the ending was too much of a fantasy, asking: “Why can’t we have an institution that practices what it preaches and leads with love and acceptance?” It’s this very message that first mobilized Bin to launch the account and also publish a Conclave zine, which Bin says was a “snapshot of the fandom” from November. The account has surged by tens of thousands of followers since. “We are a worldwide force, a global force,” says Bin.

“There’s obviously a whole group of people who love Conclave and memes and who are of varying religious backgrounds—from practicing Catholics, to people who are relapsed and maybe engaging with the faith again because of the film, or people like me, who are Buddhists, and not even Catholic at all,” Bin tells TIME in a recent interview over Zoom. The account and the community that has cropped up around it—including a Discord server—speak to that “international, diverse group.” McCain calls the account a “no brainer” to follow. Plus, it’s fun. The memes hit. A conclave is already theatrical, from the ornate garb to the secrets and seclusion; Pope Crave simply matches that energy.

TIME: Who is behind the Pope Crave account? How many admins? How many correspondents?

Susan Bin: I’m the lead admin behind Pope Crave. I’m the one with the password. There’s another admin who helped co-edit the zine that we worked on. She works in queer ministry. She also is an international human rights attorney, so that’s why she doesn’t want to be publicly associated with cardinal memes. But she’s the person who actually knows cardinals at the conclave. I’m an artist. I work in film and TV. I have a background in Catholicism. I’m not Catholic. My background is more from an art historian and archeological perspective. When I was in college, I studied Greek Myths on Roman Sarcophagi (with Professor Ruth Bielfeldt), and followed that trajectory to visual iconography of these narratives on Early Christian sarcophagi with a focus on Papal Sarcophagi (repurposing Greek Myths as Christian myths). Under Professor Christine Smith, I looked into the recordkeeping of the original placements of the Papal tombs from Old St. Peters to New St. Peters.

So who is in Rome? How quickly did all of this come together?

This account existed pre-Oscars. December, I think, is when we made the account. And we’ve been kind of memeing along during the For Your Consideration campaign for the film. But there was a very serious conversation between me and the co-admin about Pope Francis’ health, and the possibility of a real conclave happening. And so we asked, ‘Hey, if the conclave happens, are we going to go to Rome? Are we going to fly to Rome?’ We were going to pull the trigger if it happened during award season, but it happened during Easter Monday, at a time when both me and her are extremely employed. So we couldn’t physically go.

But there are two very enthusiastic members of our little Pope Crave Discord who were in Italy, but they’re not based in Rome. Other members of Conclave Hive reached out and were like, ‘Hey, I’m going to be in the Vatican. Do you want me to be the local correspondent?’ And I was like, ‘Gates wide open, come on in.’ We don’t have official press credentials, but we are very determined people.

That’s incredible. So who’s in this Discord? Tell me about the Discord.

The discord is probably around 200 members. We started it around Thanksgiving, when Conclave had its wider release beyond the U.S. And so originally this Twitter account, which I know is like sh-tposts and memes for Conclave, started to promote this charity zine project we did, which is fan-organized essays, writings, art, fan art, by over 50 contributors.

And it’s all over the world. We have Indonesians, Filipinos, obviously Americans. But that’s why we have Italians in there. We have everyone who found their way into Conclave and was abnormal about it in some way. That’s kind of the nexus of the Discord. We sh-tpost, we post our insider info there, we pull memes from the Discord—I call it a meme incubator. We’ll do watch parties. When Pope Francis died, there was a huge resurgence on the Discord. People checked in, they were like, ‘This is the first thing that I checked.’ So it’s just our little community, a little bubble.

You recently fact-checked a story in Politico and they issued a correction. How does it feel to affect mainstream media?

That’s going to be my icebreaker at my 10th college reunion next year: that I fact-checked Politico on conclave matters. I am Professor Conclave.

Can we talk about the shift from Oscar-season stan account to a legitimate papal news source?

I guess you chase the logic of conclave. I mean, the Catholic Church is a real institution and a very serious one. And also, we live in times of concerning fascism. I think that’s one of the factors that drew me to the film. There’s an element of, this [process of choosing a pope] is going to impact not just the one and a half billion people who are practicing Catholics, but it’s going to have a significant role in altering the trajectory of current global affairs. It’s serious, but I think we approach it with levity and memes the same way we approach the film because I think there’s no better coping mechanism for anything than memes. There’s nothing better to make a community come together.

The pivot to me was natural. When we started with the whole Oscar thing and with Conclave, people still wanted to learn about conclave and its actual practice. I had that more academic background in it. And then obviously as part of the Discord zine, there are people who are practicing Catholics, so everyone kind of contributed to this discourse. We were in it from the jump. We’re in it for the long game, I guess.

Has Focus Features, which distributed the film, been in touch with you?

I like to think of Focus as our friends. I don’t know how they feel about us, or if they think we’re annoying, but we had some fun DMs during the Oscar season. I was waitlisted for an event for Conclave and they actually got me in and it was very sweet of them. I don’t want to be annoying. They have obviously not contacted us since the actual conclave. To be in a Focus group chat right now with the actual conclave happening… Focus, please contact me. Give me conclave wine.

How do you feel about Pop Base or Pop Crave providing papal updates?

Well, stay out of my territory. That’s how I feel about that. Stay out of my territory. That’s it. That’s my statement.

What distinguishes you from stan accounts like a Club Chalamet or Diana Agron updates?

I’m not going to say those accounts aren’t sincere. But the reason I made this account was to create this charity zine and, if things bode well, we’ll have raised close to $75,000 for charities that are in theme with the film. So the Human Rights Intersex Fund, the Freedom Fund, and Scholars and Archivists for Palestine. The account makes memes and we’re fun, but behind it, there’s a lot of sincerity. There’s a message in the film and we’re trying to do something about that. We’re not just stans of the Catholic Church. We can be very critical of the Catholic Church. We’ve watched a bunch of very critical documentaries of the Catholic Church during Discord watch parties. Stanning means you are like, ‘Get behind me, uncritically.’ And we’re pretty critical. I think people see something in the film that has made invisible populations feel visible and that’s why people have a lot of fun out of this really rich text.

Could you tell me a little bit more about the zine?

I’m so proud of it. My literal blood, sweat, and tears. I burned skin off by putting wax on the packaging. It’s 100-plus pages. We feature all different types of creators. Everyone involved except for one person is queer. And it was really important to me that we had intersex creators in there as well.

We started it in November back when the film first came out. It was a snapshot of the fandom at the time and it was so small. There were maybe 30 of us in the Discord group. Now there’s over 200 and I kind of put a cap on letting people in. We did a pre-order period during Oscar season. Film Twitter rallied around us. People at Focus knew about it and so we got word from them that they really liked the project.

The first run, we had over $50,000 in sales, and all net profits are going to the organizations. And that was just during the Oscar run. They came in last week. Me and some friends got together, we played Conclave in the back in multiple languages, drank Italian wine and were just packaging machines. There’s a second wave of interest and I was like, ‘OK, we’ll do a second print run,’ and the amount of responses we got from that is crazy. It outstrips the original pre-order we had. I think we could make $75,000 in total sales and then all the net profits would go to these organizations. By the time there’s a new Pope, we better raise $100,000 for charity. One of my goals is for the new Pope to get a zine.

What’s your long-term plan with the Pope Crave account?

I want the Holy See to hire us so we can make official Vatican memes.

Politico reported that cardinals were watching Conclave to get guidance on the process. What are your thoughts on that?

I think they should then pre-order the zine. And also I want to ask them about their favorite fan fictions on AO3.

Who do you hope carries on Pope Francis’ legacy?

The Pope Crave Twitter account endorsed Pope Tagle. I did it for the bit. I would personally like Zuppi, but he’s not going to get it. So in my totally, non-excommunicable offenses, I bet the house on Parolin. So that’s my papal spread.

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