Foreshadowed both Benedict and Francis

I found the film fascinating on many levels, even if there were flaws, specifically the endless volley ball segment. Michel Piccoli, played the reluctant Pope, in a way that he describes in a long fascinating essay that can be found on this site on his bio.

Spoiler ahead-

When this film was made in 2012, it shows a man who technically was the Pope, and also resigned, something that not been done for 600 years, a year afterwards Benedict did exactly that. And what we did hear about the values of the New Pope were close to those of our current Pope Francis, who dealt with his discomfort with the prestige of his august position separating him from his intimate friends, by living in a small dwelling rather than in the Vatican. And his famous response when asked how he felt about homosexuals, "Who am I to judge?" could have been spoken by the film Pope, as he also could not accept that as Gods man on earth, judging was part of his job description.

The stirring of change in the Vatican was probably what informed this fiction, and it's damn close to what has turned out to be, at some level, reality.