Know what the conclave needs? A woman’s touch…

When the secret process to select Pope Francis’s successor begins this week, only cardinals under 80 will get to cast votes for candidates who are male – but women still find ways to have influence, says Catherine Pepinster

It will be an occasion of the utmost solemnity – the moment when the cardinals of the Catholic Church walk into the Sistine Chapel and won’t be seen again by the world until they have elected one among them as the next pope.

On Wednesday, more than a hundred of them, dressed in their scarlet cassocks, will stand before Michelangelo’s Last Judgement and cast their secret ballots to choose the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

When you are Catholic, as I am, it is not so noticeable in your parish church just how male the church is. Yes, the priest is a man – but there are women, too: reading scripture, helping distribute Communion, singing in the choir, working in the church. The altar servers are girls as often as they are boys.

When you look at the massed ranks of this elite, with their silken garb and their silky words, you know just why Edward Berger, director of the film Conclave, said that he saw his film as “essentially about the oldest patriarchy in the world”. He countered that patriarchy by signing Isabella Rossellini to play Sister Agnes, a nun who organises the meals and accommodation for these princes of the Church while they are locked away from the world to focus on one thing only – the election of a Pope. And while this nun might seem subservient to the power-brokers, Agnes knows a thing or two about how to subtly exercise authority, and so influence the choice they make.

Please God, I’ve been thinking, make sure that this conclave has its own Isabella Rossellini.

It may well have. Senior Catholic clerics are often looked after by nuns. I’ve been served tea and toasted crumpets by them when visiting various Archbishops of Westminster. They understand the world they’re in, and I’m sure they can exert quite nuanced influence.

They aren’t the only women of influence in the Catholic Church nowadays. For years, thanks to the heads of religious orders and women headteachers – who, according to church law, cannot be told what goes on in their school by a bishop because they are ultimately responsible there, not him – there’s long been a lot more female input than outsiders might think. More recently, the number of women theologians has grown, too.

The most seismic change has been down to Pope Francis. While he was as reluctant as any previous pontiff to ordain women, he did open the doors to change by appointing women to senior roles running Vatican departments. Thanks to him, there’s a new breed of nun at the top of the Church: not the quiet ones serving pizza and pasta, but women with actual power.

There’s Sister Raffaella Petrini, appointed by the late pope as president of the Vatican City State, so essentially its governor. Or Sister Simona Brambilla, who heads the Vatican office responsible for religious orders. Or Sister Nathalie Becquart, appointed undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops.

Such women have a part to play in the conclave. It has been largely forgotten that, until 1899, lay people could be admitted to the Sacred College of Cardinals. Admittedly, they were aristocratic men, but it was their lay status that mattered, not their poshness. Canon law was later changed so that only priests could be cardinals, but if it has changed before, it can change again, to appoint female cardinals.

I’d like a Sister Agnes in the wings influencing the vote for a pope. Even better would be a Sister Raffaella, or Simona, or Nathalie being right there in the Sistine Chapel.