O Crime do Padre Amaro, perhaps the greatest novel of Portuguese realism, is Queirós' criticism of the corrpution in the clergy of his time. A new priest, Father Amaro, arrives in the provincial capital Leiria, where he soon meets and falls in love with Amélia. She becomes pregnant, and is abandoned by Amaro. Heartbroken, Amélia dies. Faced with the existence of his newborn child when he is a 'disciple of God,' Amaro delivers the child to an infanticide, the 'maker of angels.'