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Pedro Páramo Section 16 Summary

  • We're back with Father Rentería, the sell-out priest with the guilty conscience.
  • He can't sleep because of the moral dilemma he has between serving the poor, who can't pay him, and accepting the rich people's money, even though they are pretty evil.
  • He remembers a time when a woman named Maria Dyada came to ask him to pray for her dead sister so that she would be able to get to heaven.
  • The weird thing is, her dead sister is named Eduviges, just like the woman who receives the narrator in her spare room.
  • It turns out that Eduviges killed herself, which is a big no-no in the Catholic Church, so Father Rentería says he cannot pardon her.
  • He offers to do a special mass to try to get on God's good side for Eduviges, but he knows that her family doesn't have the money for such a thing.
  • He sees shooting stars, too, and has a hard time sleeping.