EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO

EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO is an anti-Christian, anti-Catholic melodrama from Mexico. The local bishop assigns a young priest, Father Amaro, to a rural parish to get some seasoning. There, the priest finds out that, not only is the middle-aged parish priest having a long-term affair with a woman, he also accepts loads of illegal drug money to help fund a hospital. When a newspaper writes about the drug money, the bishop orders Father Amaro to lie about the hospital funding to the newspaper’s editor.

Faced with all the corruption surrounding him, Father Amaro decides to give into the sexual advances of the daughter of the parish priest’s mistress. She becomes pregnant, however, so Amaro forces her to get an abortion, but the abortion is botched. At her funeral, the parish priest walks out in disgust as the ambitious Amaro leads the funeral service.

Although the parish priest repents of his own fornication, this movie presents a totally corrupt Roman Catholic church. Not only are the leaders corrupt, so also are the parishioners. According to the story, the only good Catholic in the movie is a priest who works with peasants in the countryside. This priest, however, believes in Marxist liberation theology and sees nothing wrong in getting an abortion, despite what his church, and the Bible, clearly teaches about the sanctity of innocent life. The movie excuses the immoral fornication between the church leaders and the parishioners. Being lonely is a bigger sin, the movie suggests. The most offensive part of the movie, however, may be the fervent prayers to God that Amaro and his mistress make just before she goes to see the abortionist.

Of course, the celibacy policy of the Roman Catholic church for its priests and can be debated. Depriving all church leaders from being able to have a wife and family not only may be an impossible demand, it also can be argued that it doesn’t reflect the teachings of the New Testament, which encourages male church leaders to have a wife. That doesn’t excuse, however, the sins of fornication and abortion. Nor does it absolve Christians who let the evils of Marxism and Communism infect the Bride of Christ, God’s church.

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SUMMARY: EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO is an anti-Christian, anti-Catholic melodrama from Mexico about a Roman Catholic parish, and a Roman Catholic priest, awash in a sinful bed of lust, deceit and depravity.