Miracle in Rome

Margarito Duarte is a modest court official in a small town in Colombia. One day, his seven year old daughter Evelia suddenly dies. Twelve years later, Margarito visits the cemetery to dig up the remains of his child. Both he and the other people nearby are amazed to find their girl’s body still intact, as if she had just gone to sleep.The events has a profound effect on both the town and its inhabitants and, naturally, on the priest and the bishop. The latter, however, disagrees with his parishioners. Not believing there has been any miracle, he orders that the girl’s body be buried again. Also, that the ground be watered, in order to decompose the body.However, now that Margarito has regained his child, he has no intention of committing a crime by suffocating her. The town, turning against the bishop, indirectly helps Margarito in his aims. The crowd screams that the girl is a saint, and therefore, that there has been a miracle. All working together, they organize an emergency collection, raising a handsome amount of money with which to send father and daughter off to Rome, “for the Holy Father to decide on the miracle”. In Rome, Margarito is confronted with the vicissitudes of the millenarian Vatican City. The process is endangered by reams of red tape, with little help from the staff of the Colombian Embassy, who are fully aware of the political advantages to be gained from speeding up the process of the first Colombian saint.As an artist, I could not pass over this fascinating character who, after overcoming political intrigue, diplomatic traps and even police sieges, armed only with his dignity, finally emerges victorious. With his triumph, the brevity of life prevails over the presumptious eternity of death.