O Crime do Padre Amaro

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**Title** **The Crime of Father Amaro**
Author	José Maria Eça de Queiroz
Original title	O Crime do Padre Amaro
Country	Portugal
Language	Portuguese
Publisher
Released	1875

O Crime do Padre Amaro ("The Crime of Father Amaro") is a novel by the 19th-century Portuguese writer José Maria Eça de Queiroz. It was first published in 1875 to great controversy.

[edit] Plot introduction

The novel tells the story of a young priest, Amaro, who serves as diocesan administrator at Leiria. His illicit love affair with Amélia ends in tragedy; she becomes pregnant and dies in a back-street abortion. The church covers up the affair, quietly moving Amaro to a new parish.

An English translation by Nan Flanagan appeared in 1962 under the title The Sin of Father Amaro. The novel has also been translated as The Crime of Father Amaro, published in the UK in 2003 by Dedalus Books in a new version by Margaret Jull Costa.

[edit] Film and TV adaptations

In 2002, Carlos Carrera directed a Spanish-language version of O Crime do Padre Amaro (El crimen del padre Amaro) in Mexico. It starred Gael García Bernal as Father Amaro and was greeted with public outrage in Mexico, where Christian groups called for it to be banned. In 2002, it was one of the Best Foreign Language Film Nominees at the 75th Academy Awards. The film was criticized in Portugal as insufficiently faithful to the novel. It was said that Mexico in 2002 has little or nothing to do with the 19th century context in the novel; in addition, Amaro's motivation is different. In the novel his education steers him into the priesthood, whereas in the film he chooses to follow this path himself and has some anticlerical views. Finally, Eça's Amélia is older (aged 23) than her film equivalent.

In 2005, Carlos Coelho da Silva directed a television movie O Crime do Padre Amaro in Portugal. This was a production sponsored by SIC television channel. Padre Amaro (Jorge Corrula) and Amélia (Soraia Chaves) are the main characters, and sex and nudity are main ingredients. According to the IMDB, it is (as of January 2006) the most successful Portuguese movie in Portuguese box office history.^{[citation needed]}