easy answer to the cleric
"do your job then we won't have to do it for you"
"if you can make your statues work we will stay away from the protected areas"
@Darkwolfix
nice eposee on the (eternal) problematic of mixing religion with worldy power
what your forgetting though is that even though the church is incensed because the mc nibbled at their power base
the mc also saved huge parts of their powerbase.
just like with politics there is no guarantee that people will do the reasonable thing and change their mind on who to support infact there is a huge amount of people that vote donate or support out of habit and as long as their habits arent disturbed hard enough they will continue to do so
which is why by distributing the cure early on she effectivly limited the decline in believers and made the decline of the church temporary instead of permanent (lets face it religions are like cockroaches as long as a single egg survives you get a full on infestation after 1 year)
sure the church won't like it anyway since its hard to let power go and even harder when you had a monopole but if there is at least one smart person in this latrine then they should see that too
not to mention a full on conflict with the plague curing saint will result in a conflict
between the hardcore believers and the cured fringe believers/non believers.
and there is nothing better at disturbing patterns or habits than conflict
which in turn will result in a lot of death possibly civil war and certainly a massive hemorage of believers
a direct conflict at any point where the plague could still return is idiotic
shortly after beating the plague would be better but still stupid
if there isn't at least one head honcho that can see that well then their decline is more than deserved and will continue because nothing disturbs patterns and habits more than conflict
also it would be so easy for the church to publicly claim the cure as the work of god through the hands of the wife of the wielder of the holy sword
they could even spin a nice tale about it like they received an oracle that because of the tragic love of the holy sword being successful against all odds the loving god bestowed the virtuos holy swords wife with a selfless personal miracle in form of a cure for a future plague that she as a non cleric could make with her own power in the service of god
could use a few more mentions of god and holy but yeah they could spread that easily
and without the mc or anyone being able to prevent it... if they wanted to be vicious they could even add "miracle equal to her virtue" just in case the cure has problems so it wont be a mistake of god but because the duchess lacks the necessary virtue