By all accounts, this slick production aims at exposing the corruption of southern Italian Catholicism. A young seminarian who can't be ordained because of a speech impediment leaves the seminary to take a job with a wealthy baroness' crippled son. The seminarian is a lustful and mendacious rascal, but soon after taking the baroness to bed he heads off to Lourdes with the boy, ostensibly in hope of a miracle for the lad. Instead, he seduces a very devout woman who is visiting the site with her grandmother, who dies. This is just the main story.