The movie is based on an 1875 Portuguese novel by Eca de Queiroz, transplanted to modern Mexico. It gives us Padre Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal) as a rising star in the church, a protege of the bishop (Ernesto Gomez Cruz), who ships him to the provincial capital of Los Reyes to season a little under an old clerical hand, Padre Benito (Sancho Gracia). Benito has been having a long-running affair with the restaurant owner Sanjuanera (Angelica Aragon), whose attractive daughter, Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancon), may possibly be theirs. There is the implication that the bishop knows about Benito's sex life but doesn't much care and sends Amaro to Los Reyes for exposure to the church's realpolitik; that the bishop knows Benito's ambitious program of hospital construction is financed through money he launders for local drug lords. It is likely the bishop approves more of priests like Benito, who raise money and get results, than of another local priest, Padre Natalio (Damian Alcazar), who supports the guerrillas waging war against the drug lords.
Once established in the local basilica, Amaro cannot help but notice the fragrant Amelia. And she develops an instant infatuation with the handsome young priest, whose unavailability makes him irresistible. Amelia has been dating a local newspaperman named Ruben (Andreas Montiel) but drops him the moment Amaro expresses veiled interest. Soon Amaro and Amelia are violating the church's laws of priestly celibacy, and eventually she is pregnant, and this fate leads them to an illegal abortion clinic on a back road in the jungle.
The film has been attacked for the sacrilege of showing a priest paying for an abortion, but since he related to Amelia as a man, not a priest, there is a certain consistency in his behavior. It is also consistent that he would attempt to hide his crime, because, like Benito, he finds it easy to make himself a personal exception to general rules. There is still a little seminary idealism in Amaro, enough to be shocked that Benito is taking drug money to build the hospital, but part of Amaro is already warmning to Benito's logic: "We are taking bad money and making it good." This theology is not unique to that time or place, or even to that church; we are reminded of the CIA using drug money to finance its friends.
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