Some 120 Cardinals will join a Vatican conclave to elect Pope Francis' successor. The subject of an Oscar-winning film and best-selling book, papal elections are now a pop culture sensation.

"The Slum Pope has died. Long live the pope of the poor, the marginalised, the disenfranchised," the world cried. Now that Pope Francis' funeral is done, the Vatican—one of the world’s oldest continually operating organisations—prepares for its most sacred act of political theatre: the papal conclave.

Conclave,” the Academy Award-winning film directed by Edward Berger and starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow, opens with a sobering sequence in which several prominent figures in the Roman Catholic Church gather around the recently deceased pope behind closed doors.