When Raymond O’Malley puts together a dossier on Vincent Benítez for Thomas Lawrence – the same research that leads him to discover the cancelled “normalising” surgery – he tells Lawrence that Benítez established hospitals for victims of sexual violence; in this way the film establishes connections between the character of Benítez and the explicit rejection of sexual violence, as well as the care and comfort for the survivors of sexual violence.

Forced and/or coerced, medically unnecessary, “corrective”/“normalising” surgery is often de facto performed on intersex people, particularly on children. I was extremely happy with “Conclave”’s depiction: somebody from the global South being offered “corrective surgery” at a wealthy Swiss medical institution, and refusing it.

Perisex people, i.e. people who are not intersex, must understand that intersex “corrective surgery” or “normalising surgery” refers to surgery that affirms our sex for other people, not for ourselves. Coercion to “normalise” intersex people’s bodies is oppression and violence. Benítez did not reject the surgery because he accepts living with gender dysphoria. He rejects the surgery because his body is not wrong for him, society thinks it is, and he will not bow to a corrupt society when he knows it’s wrong. He also shows this by refusing to play politics with whom he votes for, instead voting for whom he thinks is the best option.

His understanding is that according to the vows and teachings by which he lives, the holy orders specific to a priest are for men. He fears that he is not a man. Then, after prayer and consultation with the previous Pope, he arrives at the conclusion that he is a man, and he is content.

He doubts his place in the Church more than he doubts his gender – and, as the film shows, a Pope should doubt their worthiness for the office. The sexual violence experienced by Sister Shanumi at the hands of Adayemi, who is older and holds power over her, is legal. This parallels the sexual violence experienced by Benítez who [was], legally, placed in a position where he is pressured to undergo surgery on his reproductive organs. Both Shanumi and Benítez’s secrets are “investigated” by Lawrence but ultimately kept secret by him.

There is some back and forth in canon law about whether intersex people can be ordained.

Huguccio, in around 1190, established that a “predominantly male” intersex person could be legitimately ordained as a priest. A few years later Laurentius Hispanus supposedly argued against their ordination specifically for the purposes of preventing scandal (“propter scandalum”). The next declaration was in favour, and so on and so forth. Generally, the conclusion remained that a “predominantly male” intersex person could be a priest.

Keen readers may observe an issue or two here:

• By what metric does one measure “predominantly”?
• It is violence to try and force people into a binary they were not born into.

Of note, also, in church history, is the Council of Nicaea’s declaration that “if anyone enrolled among the clergy has castrated himself when in perfect health, it is good for him to leave the ministry.” When Lawrence first enquires after Benítez’s health, he responds with the words “my health is perfect.” Benítez declares himself to be in perfect health - rejecting medicalisation of his intersexness - and in so doing establishes his adherence to the canons of the Council of Nicaea. Declining to castrate himself, he affirms he is in perfect health and not required to leave the ministry.

Roman Catholicism regards angels as being neither male nor female. “Conclave” depicts Benítez in the role of an angel – an unexpectedly arriving messenger of God’s will; even in the role of a direct manifestation of it.

Benítez rejects compulsory dyadism, societal bigotry that attempts to force people to fit into the ‘sex binary’, and chooses to remain “as God made [him]” – holy and whole as he is, without artificial division enforced by tradition. “Conclave” also shows the breaking down of other artificial divisions enforced by tradition – men and women (interestingly, Sister Agnes’ dining hall speech on this is heralded by Benítez breaking the silence around the nuns by mentioning them in his grace, standing in the same part of the same room that Agnes will); the secluded cardinals and the outside world (Ray leaving to track down information and the outer world literally exploding into the Sistine Chapel just when Lawrence gives up and casts an insincere vote for himself).

Benítez is the last of the cardinals to arrive, and has spent perhaps the most time in the harsh realities of the world, having been born into poverty and then working in extremely dangerous ministries throughout his life. A late arrival, the only cardinal not to enter the conclave in choir dress, he brings the outside world into the sequesterment, much like the explosion will. Even during sequesterment, he is outside looking at turtles as Lawrence tells him they need to go back inside for the curfew. He stands, too, aligned with the female figures at the turtle pond.

After the explosion, and Tedesco’s furious pleas for a return to greater division between Christians and Muslims, Benítez stands and refutes him. His very presence in the film is the breaking of socially compulsory divisions – like those of likely and unlikely candidates, men and women, and the “sinful world” and “holy Church.”