Conclave | #2
Who Will be the Next Leader of the Catholic Church?
After Pope Francis’ death, the conclave erupts into holy chaos. Cardinals are part diplomats, part schemers. They leverage modern tools (AI, social media, opposition research) to lobby, sabotage, and outmaneuver rivals. Publicly, they project piety and unity. Privately, they’re calculating politicians racing to exploit cracks in the Church’s fragile global coalition.
Please note: this is fiction.
Names & Nonsense
Cardinal Eleanor Nguyen’s name wasn’t a thorn in the Church’s side—it was a scalpel. It sliced through the Vatican’s calcified hypocrisy, the kind that spent centuries debating Latin pronouns while burying abuse reports in locked archives. His grandmother, a Hanoi teacher who’d smuggled rosaries under Communist raids, named him after Eleanor of Aquitaine. “A queen who ended crusades,” she’d say, “with arsenic, not Hail Marys.” Nguyen carried the name like a grenade, pin pulled.
His Collegio Urbano cell mocked Vatican excess: a cot, a teak crucifix, and a colonial map where missionaries had ringed villages like hyenas. No screens, no feeds. Nguyen trusted algorithms as much as he trusted bishops alone with altar boys. But Brother Marco—a twitchy 25-year-old aide shaped like a semicolon—burst in, tablet blazing.
“Eminence, SanctusNet’s on fire. Lefebvre’s quoting Psalm 109:8—the ‘cut his life short’ verse.”
Nguyen didn’t look up. “Remind him the next line says ‘may another seize his position.’ Perhaps the Holy Spirit’s offering early retirement?”
Marco paled. “That’s—”
“—theological wit. The Church still allows that between abuse cover-ups, yes?”
Outside, Rome frothed. Rumors spread: “A woman infiltrated the College!” TradCath forums Photoshopped him into a nun’s wimple; Progressive Catholic hailed him “the Vatican’s accidental feminist.” Nguyen scoffed. His name wasn’t a statement—it was a mirror, reflecting men terrified of their own rot.
At his first Mass, reporters swarmed like flies on a confession booth. As Nguyen chanted the Kyrie, a phone blared: “POPE ELEANOR TRENDS ON X.” The BBC jabbed a mic at him.
“Does your name support female ordination?”
Nguyen let silence linger—a tactic learned as Hanoi soldiers aimed rifles at his stillness. “My name honors a woman who survived three husbands, two wars, and one corrupt pope. Fear her, not me.”
The clip went supernova. Traditionalists screeched “hagiographic nepotism!”; reformers crowed “Aquinas with a Molotov.” By dusk, a Swiss Guard delivered a threat: “Resign or we leak your grandmother’s war records.”
Nguyen held the note to a candle. “Do they run these through Google Translate before sending, Marco, or after?”
Nguyen watched the threat burn, ashes drifting into a chalice he’d repurposed as an ashtray. The flame trembled, casting shadows like the ghosts of missionaries who’d tried to baptize his ancestors with French names. Brother Marco hovered, tablet flashing a SanctusNet poll: “62% of Traditionalist ‘TradCath’ Influencers Endorse Exorcising Your Name.”
“Draft a response?” Marco asked. “The AI suggests quoting medieval mystics. Or… flexing?”
Nguyen blew out the candle. “Saints didn’t need algorithms. They had—”
“Faith?”
“PR teams. Read Julian of Norwich’s tweets—‘All shall be well #Blessed.’ Even mystics need branding.”
Outside, aides bet papal futures like medieval sin coupons (indulgences: pay-to-pardon schemes). Nguyen’s name hung in the air, a litmus test for fears older than the Council of Trent (*16th-century Vatican reboot*). He’d seen this panic before—not in Rome, but Hanoi, where his grandmother hid rosaries in rice sacks and muttered, “Names scare empires. They can’t chew what they can’t swallow.”
A knock. A rookie Swiss Guard clanked in, armor squeaking like a poorly greased confessional. The note reeked of bergamot and desperation: “Your grandmother’s midnight Masses in Hanoi didn’t go unnoticed. Resign. —Friends of Tradition.”
Nguyen traced the paper’s edge—rough as the rice-paper letters his grandmother burned before dawn patrols. They’d found her secrets. Of course they had.
“Alert Byrne?” Marco whispered. “His AI handles… counterintelligence.”
“Byrne’s machines can’t dig up graves.” Nguyen tucked the note into his breviary beside rau răm (Vietnamese coriander), her favorite herb. “Get me the 1954 missionary files from Tonkin. The ones where they called her a ‘communist witch.’”
That night, Nguyen knelt before his crucifix, the wood smoothed by generations of desperate fingertips. The Collegio’s walls hummed with dead cardinals debating dogma in eternity’s group chat. He lit a candle, its flame fighting the draft.
“Inter innumeras pressuras,” he murmured. Amid countless pressures.
Somewhere, Byrne’s AI crunched numbers, Herrera’s aides meme’d, and Mbeki’s disdain fossilized into dogma. But here, Nguyen’s name was neither weapon nor wound—just a seed, waiting to crack stone.
Nguyen found Brother Anselm in the Vatican Archives at 3 a.m., the hour when even saints yawn. The archivist—a skeletal man rumored to know every secret from Peter to TikTok—stood amid stacks of colonial-era reports. Dust motes swirled like the Vatican’s unconfessed sins.
“The 1954 Tonkin files,” Anselm croaked, sliding a dossier stained with sacramental wine and shame. “Censored by Pius XII. Resurrected by… guilt.”
Nguyen opened it. Between missionary logs (“Baptized 12, bribed 30”) was a photo of his grandmother, Thảo Nguyen, before a bamboo chapel. She clutched a rosary and a rifle. The French caption sneered: “Sister Eleanor refuses rescue. Prefers negotiating with God and Communists.”
He traced her face. He’d known her as the woman who taught him Latin prayers while shelling snails for phở. Here, she was a legend—a nun who’d stored communion wine in artillery shells and baptized guerrillas between mortar rounds. The Church erased her, but the dirt never forgets.
Anselm coughed, lungs rattling like a rosary. “The ‘Friends of Tradition’ think this is blackmail.”
“It’s a eulogy,” Nguyen said, tucking the photo into his cassock. “Why keep what you burn?”
Anselm’s grin cut like a confessional screen. “Archivists are the Church’s gut bacteria. We eat its lies so it can shit out new ones.”
Dawn found Nguyen in the Vatican Gardens, his grandmother’s photo smoldering in his pocket. Marco waved a SanctusNet poll: “Should Nguyen Be Saint or Heretic? (P.S. Merch Drop Inbound!)”
“They’re calling her ‘Glock-toting Grandma,’” Marco moaned. “The Jesuits are selling ‘WWND?’ bracelets.” (What Would Nguyen’s Grandma Do?)
Nguyen crouched under an olive tree, roots clawing up through the soil like the Church’s buried crimes. “She once fed a Việt Minh officer phở laced with sacramental wine. He converted, defected, then opened a bakery. Sold Jesus croissants.”
Marco blinked. “True?”
“Truth dies here. Stories ferment.”
The garden breathed—incense and espresso, rot and rosemary. Somewhere, Byrne’s AI dissected his “papability,” Herrera’s interns meme’d, and Mbeki’s silence thickened. But here, Nguyen felt his grandmother’s ghost, stubborn as a weed.
“What now?” Marco asked.
Nguyen snapped a rosemary sprig. “They’ll weaponize her. But shame only works if you fear the past.” He grinned. “I am the past.”
By noon, trad influencers screeched for Nguyen’s head; progressives hailed his grandma as “the OG Pope Joan.” A note arrived with his lunch: “Martyrdom would tidy this mess. —FoT.”
Nguyen slurped his phở, dunking Herrera’s gluten-free “empathy bread” (bland as papal apologies). Marco begged to counterattack with medieval mystic quotes.
“No,” Nguyen said. “Release her phở recipe.”
“The… recipe?”
“With her notes: ‘Marinate bones with rage and five-spice. Serve with optional sainthood.’”
It trended faster than a Vatican cover-up.
Sermons & Systems
The Synod Hall’s vaulted ceiling hung low that morning, heavy with the weight of centuries and poor ventilation. Cardinals filed into their stalls, their scarlet robes pooling like bloodstains on the velvet cushions. Above them, frescoed saints stared down with expressions ranging from pious constipation to holy heartburn—fitting, given the agenda. Byrne slumped beneath a particularly sour-faced St. Augustine, the saint’s mosaic eyes judging his tablet’s glow. VeritasGPT’s latest sermon draft blinked: “The Church as Divine Wi-Fi: Signal Strength May Vary.”
He’d scrapped the AI’s first attempt (“Brothers, become Christ’s hotspot”) but kept the recycle bin handy for his dignity.
Two rows ahead, Herrera shot him a wry smile. Their feud was older than the hall’s sound system—a relic that crackled like a dying apostle.
The Dean—a Belgian skeleton who could drain joy from a resurrection—rapped his gavel. “Carissimi fratelli, we gather under saints, seraphim, and… ah, fire code compliance.” A cough echoed where laughter should’ve been.
Byrne climbed the podium, his shadow stretching across Augustine’s disapproving frown. The mic screeched, last updated when “synod” meant “dodging barbarians.”
“Brothers,” he began, “we’re at a crossroads—or as my niece says, a ‘multiplayer raid.’”
Silence. A Nigerian cardinal whispered, “Is he quoting Fortnite…?”
“Our Church must be a lighthouse and… broadband.” The metaphor curdled. Nguyen’s eyebrow lifted—a gesture that’d once defunded a diocese. “Guiding souls while staying”—Byrne grasped—“online.”
A radiator hissed. A Jesuit facepalmed.
Herrera’s turn at the podium was less a homily than a liturgical car crash, the wreckage of his dignity strewn across the Synod Hall’s acoustics. His notes shook in his hands, the legacy of too many nights spent bargaining with ConclavePredict’s delusion that “divine jazz” could salvage his relevance. The microphone amplified each of his gulps into a cavernous echo, as if the hall itself were sighing.
“Synodality,” he declared, pausing as though the word might bite him, “is not a… group chat.” The phrase dripped with the disdain of a man who still wrote encyclicals in fountain pen. “It is divine jazz—improvisation within sacred structure!”
Cardinal Mbeki’s face remained as readable as a Latin gravestone, but Okeke’s lips twitched—a suppressed smirk that rippled through the stalls like a rogue hymn. Herrera barreled on, sweat pooling where his collar dug into his neck. St. Cecilia gazed down from her fresco, her lyre clutched like a weapon. “We must… syncopate with the Holy Spirit!”
The silence that followed was the kind usually reserved for Eucharistic accidents. A young Lithuanian cardinal muttered, “Deus ex Spotify,” into his sleeve.
Then came Nguyen.
He climbed the steps without notes, his missal tucked under his arm like a soldier’s field manual. The microphones, so cruel to Herrera, hushed in deference. “Tradition,” he began, the word settling over the room like incense smoke, “is not a spreadsheet. It is a root.” His eyes swept the assembly—Byrne’s tech-glazed exhaustion, Herrera’s damp desperation, the Dean’s bureaucratic glaze. “Roots do not pivot. They split stone. They outlive empires. They feast on the rot others call history.”
The ghost of his grandmother—the nun with the rifle and the rosary—hovered in the pause. Cassocks rustled; Mbeki’s chin dipped in a nod so slight it might have been a trick of the candlelight.
As the cardinals spilled into the corridors, their whispers trailing like guilty confessions, Byrne found a note in his cassock: “Judas 2.0: Uninstall. —FoT.” The watermark was Vatican-issue, the fibers identical to conclave ballots. Near a Bernini angel, his gaze caught Herrera’s—just for a second. No algorithms, no jazz, just two men waist-deep in the same holy sewage.
Night in the Vatican Gardens. Byrne knelt, crushing the note into the soil between the oak roots, their gnarled fingers clawing through earth like the Church’s buried scandals. Above him, St. Peter’s dome loomed, its shadow stretching toward the server farm where VeritasGPT hummed, eternally recalculating salvation’s odds.
To be continued…
Thank you!
This five-part story was generated using DeepSeek, with some human edits (~75% AI)
Prompt: Now that pope Francis has died, we need to come up with a fictionalized, entertaining, humorous, and highly relevant account of the search for a successor. This story will be called Conclave. Provide plot ideas now. Read [news articles] for inspiration, but don't focus too much on their exact content; we're looking for something new and original.(…)
Prompt: Let's use ideas 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8! AI is a great angle, but we must stay away from old tropes: old-timey-robot-voice, evil-AI-taking-over-the-world, hacker nonsense. Instead, let's think of more interesting and realistic options. No time travel.(…)
Core Premise: The Francis Algorithm (Inspired by Idea 8)
Pope Francis left behind a cryptic final message: “My successor lies where the lions sleep.” The Vatican’s secretive AI system—SACRA (Systematic Algorithm for Catholic Revelation and Ascension)—is tasked with decoding it. SACRA, designed to analyze centuries of encyclicals, historical texts, and Francis’s own speeches, spits out absurd clues that send cardinals scrambling across Rome. But SACRA has a quirk: It’s been trained on too much medieval theology and Francis’s off-the-cuff jokes, leading to gloriously unhinged interpretations.
(…)
Prompt: Why would Francis leave any clues? Why a treasure hunt? No, that's not what we want at all. The Vatican's own clunky AI system is weird: can that really make for a good story? Think it through. Maybe add a political angle. Try again.(…)
Core Premise: The Digital Crusade
The death of Pope Francis triggers a conclave where 133 cardinals—divided by ideology, geography, and ambition—vie for power. Behind the scenes, they weaponize modern tools (AI, social media, leaks) to lobby, sabotage, and outmaneuver rivals. The story unfolds through three lenses: global cultural clashes, tech-driven political scheming, and the absurdity of maintaining dignity in a meme-driven world**.
(…)
(10 more prompts were needed to get something decent)
"Glock toting Grandma." I'd say more but I don't want to offend anyone. 🙈🙉🙊
Bishop's alone with altar boys! Pay to pardon schemes! WWND bracelets!
Hilarious. 😂