Jud Duplenticy, a former boxer turned Catholic priest in upstate New York, is reassigned after punching a rude deacon. He is made assistant pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a rural parish led by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. Wicks is the grandson of Reverend Prentice Wicks, who forced Jefferson's mother, Grace, to remain at the church with the promise of receiving his inheritance, only for the fortune to disappear after his death; Grace ransacked the church and destroyed its crucifix, which the younger Wicks refuses to replace. Jud comes into conflict with Wicks over his incendiary preaching, which has driven away all but his most loyal parishioners. During a Good Friday service, Wicks dies suddenly in a storage closet near the pulpit, stabbed in the back with a knife fashioned from a devil's head lamp adornment that Jud previously stole from a bar and threw through a church window. Though the evidence is inconclusive, suspicion falls on Jud.
