Institute History
Description
Dr. José Gregorio Hernandez dies in a tragic accident in Caracas. While buying medicine for a poor elderly woman, he's run over by a car driven by one of his patients. Adored by the masses, his funeral is attended by the thousands. When he arrives in heaven, Saint
Peter tells him he's been chosen to be the first Venezuelan saint, but to become a saint he will have to endure a long and difficult training process that will prove his obedience and discipline.
José Gregorio discovers that he can hear his patients on earth calling to him for his help. With the assistance of Angel Cerasumel, he visits the patients and performs miracle cures from the afterlife. These visits, unsanctioned by Saint Peter, swiftly gain him a reputation as a miraculous healer, a semi-mythological figure.
Pilar, a young woman in Bogota, seeks the ministrations of the legendary José Gregorio when she learns that her father is terminally ill. Though she is a skeptic, raised an atheist and from a scientific background, a desperate Pilar believes in him—José Gregorio's reputation is as much as part of pop culture as it is Catholic. She goes to a medium in an effort to communicate with José Gregorio and miraculously finds José Gregorio at the medium's house! The medium is a charlatan who is capitalizing on the José Gregorio frenzy by claiming to be his earthly representative. José Gregorio, in his appropriately saintly way, is there convincing the medium to end her deceptive behavior.
In heaven, things are chaotic. José Gregorio has broken many rules by being disobedient, traveling to earth often to visit patients, forgetting his responsibilities as a saint-in-training, and developing a following that resembles a pagan cult. Disappointed by José Gregorio's insubordinate behavior, Saint Peter refuses to help him save Pilar's father, which, in turn, provokes a fist fight between them. Without José Gregorio's help, Pilar's father dies and both José Gregorio and Pilar must learn that in heaven, as on earth, there are things that can not be controlled.
JOSE GREGORIO is a story about faith and death told with humor and magic.