When
Stigmata begins, a priest in São Paulo,
Father Almeida, dies. A statue of the Virgin Mary cries human
blood. Father Andrew Kiernan (played by Gabriel Byrne), having
been assigned by the Vatican to investigate a reported appearance
of the Virgin Mary in an oxidized rock, takes an unscheduled
trip to São Paulo. A rosary of Father Almeida is sold
in a Rio de Janeiro market to an American tourist, who in
turn mails the pendant to her daughter Frankie Paige (played
by Patricia Arquette) in Pittsburgh. While in a bathtub, she
suffers a trauma that nearly results in her death until she
is discovered and rushed to the emergency room. Although near
death, she miraculously recovers. Then one day, while working
in a beauty parlor, she sees a woman across the street holding
a baby, crying. Watching the baby fall into the street, she
rushes across traffic but finds nothing. On the way home in
the subway, she suddenly importunes a priest seated in the
same car, asking him if he is Andrew Kiernan; after she rips
a cross from the neck of a nun, the subway speeds up as her
back suffers lacerating wounds from an invisible source. Upon
arrival at a hospital, she receives a tentative diagnosis
of epilepsy. Meanwhile, Vatican Cardinal Daniel Houseman (played
by Jonathan Pryce) reassigns Kiernan from pursuing the crying
Virgin mystery to go to Pittsburgh. Kiernan is a scientist
whom the Vatican assigns to investigate claims of miracles
so that they can be discredited. But in Pittsburgh Kiernan
encounters another puzzle-all those previously exhibiting
stigmata (the wounds of Jesus) have been fervent believers,
whereas Frankie is an atheist. The story reaches a climax
when Frankie starts writing something in Aramaic and talking
as if possessed. When Kiernan secretly faxes a photo of her
writing to an Aramaic scholar at the Vatican, those in the
Catholic hierarchy get wind of what is going on, travel to
Pittsburgh, attempt an exorcism, but are ultimately foiled
by Kiernan. Titles at the end try to link Father Almeida with
the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas in 1945 on a scroll
in a cave at the Dead Sea, and the point of the film is that
the Vatican supposedly suppresses the discovery. In actuality,
the official position of the Catholic hierarchy is a "no
comment" on the so-called Gospel, the unremarkable text
of which is available on the Internet; as the film indicates,
many texts purport to contain actual sayings of Jesus. Stigmata,
directed by Rupert Wainwright, serves to expose the Vatican's
concern for its own preservation as an institution over the
discoveries of science, as the film's tagline is "The
messenger must be silenced." MH
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