Best picture

Best picture | Daily Tribune

At the recently held Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards, many eyes were on the movie Conclave — not with cynosure or jealousy for its major win, but perhaps for the timeliness of the theme, with the real-life Pope Francis seriously ill at the moment.

It is no secret that the papacy is not bereft of politics. A reviewer of this big SAG winner rightfully described the situation surrounding papal appointments as “intricate machinations.” It is a complex web indeed of secrets and lies running so deep that one wonders how much of the spirituality still remains throughout it all.

If the plot sounds familiar though seemingly out of place in a religious context, it is because we get a regular dose of behind-the-scenes power plays from the stories blared out in the headlines.

The news is always filled to the brim with intrigue and power struggles. We entered the new year with a huge blaze abroad and a conflagration in our Congress, where an impeachment complaint from the House of Representatives cranked up the brewing feud between the Marcoses and the Dutertes, where we only used to glimpse signs of discord in a snub or two.

This quickly rose to the level of fisticuffs given the verbal punches being dealt — calling a President a possible dictator and retorting that an ex-president is a troublemaker, for example. Meanwhile, the impeached public official is said to be strengthening her arsenal as her allies in the Senate allegedly sit tight until they can begin to try the case — but not for a number of months yet.

After all, a lot can happen between now and 2 June.

There is the election of new public officials, which of course brings with it a whole other level of dissonance. And when the Senate resumes its session, the process of hearing the complaint will likely be lengthy and lugubrious. It seems officials tend to follow rules and protocols to the letter when the situation calls for it. In other instances, political veterans have been known to call out the apparent ignorance of some elected leaders who go about their duties with barely enough knowledge of said rules and protocols.

It is very likely that the next few months will provide many hours of entertainment for the political watcher. And maybe, though many are praying otherwise, another round of speculation on the papacy.

In this, I doubt Conclave, which has been nominated for eight Oscars (including for Best Picture), will get away scot-free from the controversy police in Catholic Philippines. The story is about electing a new Pope after the passing of the previous one. The plot revolves around the conclave, which is the term for the gathering of cardinals from around the world to vote for a new pontiff.

Anything involving candidacy and ballots, we know, will come with some disagreement, never mind if it is transpiring in the hallowed halls of the Sistine Chapel or in the Senate of the Philippines.