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When Roman Catholic bishops in Mexico label the film blasphemous, a curious public flocks to theaters to see The Crime of Father Amaro, about a young priest's sexual indiscretions.
By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 22, 2002
A film about a Roman Catholic priest who seduces a 16-year-old girl is breaking box-office records -- and social taboos -- in Mexico, despite efforts by the church to block its release.
The distributors of the film, The Crime of Father Amaro, could not have wished for better negative publicity.
Before it opened in movie theatres it had been branded blasphemous and sacrilegious by scandalized bishops. Mexico's archbishop, Cardinal Norberto Ribera, said the film reflected "atheist, intolerant laicism aimed at persecuting the church."
One cleric went as far as warning his parishioners it would be a sin if they went to see it.
That set off a stampede, even in supposedly conservative Mexico, where 80 percent of the population profess to be Catholic.
"The disproportionate reaction against it caused a lot of curiousity," director Carlos Carrera, one of the country's top filmmakers, said at a news conference. "I don't think it would have had the same success."
The movie's distributor, Columbia Pictures, said Father Amaro brought in a record $3.2-million during its first weekend, outgrossing recent Hollywood blockbusters such as Monsters Inc. and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The film, made with a $2-million budget, continues to pull in audiences, with revenue topping $8.2-million in the first 10 days.
Samuel Goldwyn Films recently bought the U.S. distribution rights for Father Amaro for release in November.
Besides boosting the film's ticket sales, the public debate has served to highlight what many Mexicans -- including some of the religious faithful -- perceive as the hypocrisy of an out-of-touch church hierarchy.
While reviewers say the film contains plenty of material that the church would prefer not be seen, Mexican analysts have strongly questioned the motives of clergy who want it censored.
The film tells the story of a young, recently ordained priest who seduces Amelia, a beautiful 16-year-old girl in a small rural Mexican village.
As Father Amaro wrestles with his guilt he discovers he is not alone. Some of his more experienced fellow priests are also engaged in sinful conduct. One is having an affair with a woman while accepting "donations" from drug traffickers to fund a new hospital. As he is driven through the gates of the drug lord's ranch in the trafficker's Chevrolet Suburban, he blesses a gunman named Tiburon, or Shark. Once inside the palatial estate, the priest presides over the baptism of the trafficker's infant.
Another priest supports an armed guerrilla movement in Mexico's highlands.
Far from being a distortion of truth, analysts say the film owes its success in large part to its basis in reality.
"In practice, the reality goes even beyond the film's portrayal," said Jorge Erdely, a Mexican theologian and editor of a religious magazine. "There's a lot of dual morality over the dogma of celibacy. That's very real in Mexico."
Erdely cites the case of Bartolome Carrasco, archbishop of Oaxaca, who wrote a report to the Vatican in 1990 saying that 75 percent of the priests in his diocese were not celibate. Like their counterparts in the United States, the Mexican bishops are battling accusations that they have covered up for pedophile priests.
"Narco-charity" is an open secret in the drug-infested northern border region. Liberation theology priests in the church's liberal wing also are deemed to have played a role in stirring up rebellion in the southern state of Chiapas.
Other experts say the film also has a wider focus than the church's role in Mexican society. "The town of Father Amaro is a microcosm of Mexico, tied down by the weight of the past, imprisoned by poverty, muzzled by fanaticism," wrote Denise Dresser, a leading U.S. analyst of Mexican affairs in the Mexico City daily paper, Reforma. "The institutions that should protect the population abuse them; the men who should be saving souls end up corrupting them; and the authorities that should be acting in the name of the population end up laughing at them."
Ignoring those elements of the film, the bishops instead have focused their criticism on several scenes that they say are disrespectful of the church.
"This movie makes fun of the most sacred religious symbols of the Catholic community and of the religious beliefs of Catholics," the Catholic Bishop's Conference said.
A national antiabortion group, Pro Vida, filed suit against government arts and culture officials who helped secure $350,000 in state funding for the making of the film, accusing them of violating laws that protect religious freedoms.
"The film is blasphemy . . . and its sponsors are trampling on religious freedom, our most sacred beliefs and our rights," said Jorge Serrano Limon, the president of Pro Vida.
He and other critics particularly objected to two scenes: In the first, Father Amaro kisses a teenage parishioner under a portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's most revered religious figure. In another, the girl spits out a Communion wafer and feeds it to her cat.
"I don't say that such lapses among priests don't exist, but they aren't the norm," the bishop of Guadalajara, Juan Sandoval Iniguez, wrote in his diocese's weekly bulletin.
That doesn't seem to bother audiences.
More than 42,000 people participated in a call-in survey conducted by the television network Televisa. About 72 percent said the movie should be shown, while 28 percent said it should be banned.
The film stars the rising young Mexican actor Gael Garcia, who made a big impression in the Oscar-nominated film Amores Perros.
The makers of Father Amaro deny it was meant as an attack on the church.
"The film shows a viewpoint of the church as an institution," said Carrera, the director. "It is not about religion, but rather a reflection on people who use religion to their own advantage, which is a reality."
The film comes at a time of political change in church-state relations in Mexico after the end of seven decades of anticlerical rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Under the new conservative government of Vicente Fox, the church has been seeking to reimpose its authority.
A devout Catholic, Fox has challenged the country's once strict separation of church and state. During a visit to Mexico by Pope John Paul II last month, Fox broke with tradition by becoming the first Mexican president to attend a papal Mass and by kissing the pontiff's ring.
Although millions of Mexicans lined the streets of the capital to greet the pope, analysts say the country's 90-million Catholics are less enamored of their bishops.
"This movie is not censurable, our country has gone beyond that. This whole thing has shown we are not a conservative country," Garcia told a Mexico City news conference.
Both the national film institute and the government's arts council took out full-page advertisements in Mexican newspapers to justify their backing of the movie, which was updated from a 19th century Portuguese satire.
"The church is part of the old Mexico that still wants to have power," said Carrera. "But Mexican society is a lot more mature than that."