WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the entirety of Midnight Mass, streaming now on Netflix.
In Mike Flanagan's newest horror show Midnight Mass, Father Paul is a mysterious new figure on Crockett Island. He claims to have been sent by the diocese to take the place of Monsignor John Pruitt, the pastor of the island's Catholic church who traveled to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage. Father Paul also claims that Monsignor Pruitt fell ill and is receiving treatment on the mainland. However, from the beginning, Father Paul seems to know more about the island and its residents than he could glean from conversations with the monsignor. Also, he brings with him to the island a giant, mysterious trunk. As the miracles begin to spread throughout Crockett Island, Father Paul eventually reveals the truth: he is actually Monsignor John Pruitt, and in his trunk he brought an angel to the island that dooms almost everyone.
Father Paul's confession is interspersed throughout "Book Three: Proverbs." The episode begins with a flashback to Father Paul's first day on the island. In the flashback, he sits in an empty confessional booth and explains what really happened to him. As he narrates his journey, key scenes are illustrated in wood carvings with Roman numerals beneath them. These wooden scenes are similar to the stations of the cross, a meditation in many Christian religions usually practiced within the Lenten season to reflect on the death of Jesus. Since the wood carvings are presumably within Father Paul's own imagination, they show that he sees himself as a Christ-like figure and prophet sent to "save" the people of Crockett Island.
In the confessional booth, Father Paul states that the monsignor's dementia was far worse than anyone realized, and he wandered off during his tour. He found a cave in a desert and was assaulted by a creature lurking there. The creature also gets the monsignor to drink its blood as well. When he awoke, he was young again and his dementia was cured. Father Paul believes that his cure was a miracle, and by extension he concludes that the creature is an angel. He abandons his own identity as the monsignor at first to adopt the role of Father Paul, wanting to gradually get the island used to miracles before revealing that shocking truth.
Father Paul does not pause to consider that his savior might be a fallen angel. He transports the angel to the island in a trunk because the angel is sensitive to sunlight. The angel's wings are also suspiciously batlike. The angel feeds on blood, first from the stray cats, but later moves on to human victims. Thus, the angel is much closer to most people's common conception of vampires than to most biblical legends, even if the angel inspires the same fear. Father Paul also mixes the angel's blood with the communion wine, making his parishioners drink it without their knowledge or consent. While the blood leads to the perceived miracles, he still robs them of their choice.
As Father Paul's influence and congregation grows, he appears to get sicker and sicker. Eventually, he dies from a seizure, but he is resurrected. As the show progresses, Father Paul begins to realize that he has been transformed into a creature like the angel, dependent on blood to survive. Throughout, he seems convinced of the righteousness of his actions as he leads more and more people down his dark path. He claims that his lack of guilt over his actions must mean that his path is righteous. Instead, he becomes a murderer.
Father Paul's faith is manipulated, both by the angel who wishes to feed and spread its "blessing" and by Beverly Keene, a parishioner who wields her faith like a weapon both to stroke her own ego and punish those she deems unworthy. While their influence enables Father Paul's worst impulses, his decisions are still his own. In the penultimate episode, the midnight Easter Vigil mass turned into a bloodbath. Father Paul and Beverly Keene influenced many of the members to drink poison so that they could be resurrected again as creatures like the angel. However, the change did not go to Father Paul's plan, and a massacre ensued.
As much as Father Paul tries to claim a righteous mission for God, his true motivations are revealed in the finale. Throughout the series, Father Paul took a particular interest in Mildred Gunning, the aging mother of Dr. Sarah Gunning. In the midst of the midnight mass carnage, Mildred shoots Father Paul. While the gunshot does not kill him, it does finally break through his delusions. The reason why Mildred is able to get through to Father Paul is because they were lovers in the past, and Sarah is actually Father Paul's daughter. Father Paul finally admits the real reason he brought the angel to the island was not necessarily to save everyone. He mostly wanted to save Mildred and Sarah. Father Paul believed that he was finally being given a second chance to have a family with them. Instead, his actions led to all of their deaths, and the deaths of most of the people on the island.
Thus, in the beginning, Father Paul's motives were rooted in a desire to help the people he cared about. However, his fears of his own death and the deaths of others caused him to become seduced into helping bring about their destruction. The newly transformed parishioners' bloody rampage only lasts until sunrise, when they all burn in the sunlight. Father Paul serves as a cautionary figure who used his faith to blindly justify his actions. More than anyone else, he was lying to himself, both about the "miracles" he brought about and his own motivations.
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