The conclave is one of the world’s most solemn, sacred and consequential elections. It is also a secretive meeting of older men who wear red robes and engage in politicking, scheming and smoking while picking the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.
The internet could not resist.
“It’s so wild,” Rob Anderson, an author and internet personality who focuses on pop and L.G.B.T.Q. culture, said of the conclave, which begins on Wednesday. “It’s dramatic and it’s fashion.”
One of the world’s longest-running elections will play out for a global audience that has never been so immersed in social media and fluent in memes. It comes after the release of the movie “Conclave” last year, showing that the pope’s election can be watched while eating popcorn.
Now, after years of growing disaffection with the church, many young people around the world are leaning into the memeability of Vatican pageantry and intrigue.
“The Vatican-core summer has begun,” read a recent article in the Italian magazine Rivista Studio.
In a mix of fascination, irreverence, fandom and possible blasphemy, video compilations of cardinals with Charli XCX soundtracks have popped up online. TikTok creators wearing paper skull caps have mimicked conclave conversations. Influencers have published voters’ guides to the conclave, fan pages for candidates have appeared and rankings of the top contenders based on very un-Catholic criteria have flourished. A meme of a cardinal lighting another’s cigarette gathered over five million views on X.
“All these cardinals are looking impossibly chic in Rome smoking,” Victoria Genzini, an Italian curator who runs a meme page, said in an interview. Since Jude Law starred in the 2016 TV series “The Young Pope,” she said, “there has been a rise of pop gaze about the Vatican.”
“It’s easy to make memes,” Ms. Genzini added. “The Catholic iconography is camp.”
Some online commentators have expressed indignation about the online content, saying that the banter about a Catholic leader is offensive. One criticized “humor at the expense of other people’s beliefs.” Another said the rituals around a pope’s death and succession should be treated as sacred.
The digital humorists seemed undeterred, however. One meme, inspired by the headline of a New York Times opinion article asks: “Is the cure to male loneliness a conclave?”
In one TikTok video, Italian TV fashion commentary plays over footage of Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American, wearing a meters-long red cloak.
In other videos, the cardinals are introduced as talent-show contestants, or “divas,” according to Mr. Anderson, the internet personality, who is based in New York and made a series of popular videos, called the “pope games,” describing the conclave.
“The idea that these old men are locked in a building like a sleepover or a high school lock-in wearing their PJs is hilarious,” Mr. Anderson said.
Now travel bloggers from Dublin and graphic designers from New Jersey are weighing in on the papal pick and sharing their takes on Instagram and X.
The new pontiff, who could be elected by 133 cardinals soon after the conclave begins, will be asked to make difficult decisions on the future of the church and address the Vatican’s straitened finances and its sexual abuse scandals.
The internet has “taken ahold of all the different kinds of personalities that could possibly be the next pope,” Mr. Anderson said. “I mean, Pope Pizzaballa,” he said, referring to Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa of Jerusalem, considered a front-runner.
“The internet really was rooting for him simply because they want to be able to say that name a lot,” he said.
Even the White House has joined in, publishing an AI-generated photo of President Trump dressed as the pope. Mr. Trump, who said he had had “nothing to do with it,” brushed off critics, saying they “can’t take a joke.”
Vice President JD Vance contributed his own dose of humor by posting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who recently took on a new interim role as national security adviser, “could take on a bit more. If only there was a job opening for a devout Catholic …”
A Canadian conservative magazine resurfaced a video of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, a Filipino prelate, singing an excerpt from “Imagine.” (The Lennon song starts, “Imagine there’s no heaven,” a line the cardinal apparently did not say.) The website LifeSiteNews accused Cardinal Tagle of a “scandal or scandalous ignorance” for singing what it called the “atheist anthem.” But others were galvanized.
“Karaoke under the Tagle papacy gonna go crazzzy,” Pope Crave, an account dedicated to fans of the new “Conclave” movie, wrote on X.
Some online commentators have turned clergymen like Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Italy — described by fans as a “progressive icon” — into political symbols. His liberal positions have pushed some conservatives to trumpet “NO to a communist pope.”
Other observers questioned whether the interest in the conclave would translate into a lasting involvement with the church.
Elisa Giudici, author of the Rivista Studio article, said it was precisely because the church now meant so little to many young people that they believed they were allowed to approach it lightheartedly without feeling impious or stigmatized (or set for a beheading).
“The conclave used to be experienced as something important from the perspective of faith,” Ms. Giudici said. “Now, that fell through and people experience it as a music festival or the Olympics.”
Many of the voting cardinals are active on social media, but during the conclave, they will have to drop off their phones in the guesthouse where they will stay, a Vatican spokesman said. Signal transmissions for cellphones in Vatican City will also be switched off during the conclave, the Vatican’s governing body said.
“We are, of course, afraid also of political influence,” Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Sweden said in an interview last week.
An analysis made available on Monday to The Times by Cyabra, a social media intelligence company in Tel Aviv that monitors disinformation, found that one in five profiles posting on X about the conclave or speculating about the next pope or the future of the church were bots.
But much of the genuine content appeared to come from sources that are traditionally far from the Catholic world or even antagonized by the Vatican, like members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.
Last year, after Pope Francis used a slur against gay men, Romans put it on banners, turning the insult into a word of pride. Now, the queer internet is all over the conclave.
“There’s so much material,” Mr. Anderson said. “Everybody loves this.”
