A 17th-century nun becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with a novice. But it is Benedetta's shocking religious visions that threaten to shake the Church to its core.
The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.