Child of Darkness, Child of Light 1991

In a small, fictional town of Briscayne Falls in Pennsylvania, the Vatican dispatches Father Rosetti, Paxton Whitehead, to investigate reports of an impending virgin birth. On the road, he is ambushed by mysterious bikers, his vehicle is wrecked, and he is left in a catatonic state. In his stead, the Vatican sends Father Justin O’Carroll, Tony Denison, who carries a grave warning: seventy years earlier, the Virgin Mary appeared in an Italian village and left a message about the birth of a divine child at the end of the century.

Upon arriving in Briscayne Falls, O’Carroll encounters a pregnant, poverty-stricken 15-year-old girl named Margaret Gallagher, Sydney Penny, who is ruthlessly teased by her peers for claiming to be a virgin. Margaret also endures vivid visions of people dying, and when a classmate harasses her, the aggressive act is met with inexplicable, painful wounds. Amidst the growing fear of an epidemic sweeping the nation, O’Carroll uncovers another thread of the prophecy: a wealthy Boston girl, Kathleen Beavier, Kristin Dattilo, who seems to fit the second half of the ominous pattern and may be targeted as part of the same century-spanning prophecy that concerns a child associated with Satan.

As O’Carroll investigates, he discovers unsettling parallels between Margaret’s circumstances and Kathleen’s life, prompting a tense race to determine which girl is bearing the mother of which child. The investigation intensifies as the nation wrestles with a polio epidemic that adds urgency and fear to every decision being made from the Vatican to the streets of Boston and beyond.

Both girls ultimately give birth, but the outcomes are starkly different: Margaret Gallagher brings a son into the world, a newborn who embodies the ominous figure of the antichrist, while Kathleen Beavier delivers a daughter who is envisioned as the Second Coming. The clash between prophecy and desire, faith and fear, threads through the lives of all involved, leaving a wake of moral ambiguity and questions about destiny, innocence, and the limits of human knowledge as the century draws to a close.