Although Scully's Catholicism had been touched upon before in the series, this was one of the first episodes to overtly deal with her faith.
The script was being constantly revised right up to and during filming.
The story idea was inspired by Francesco Forgione A.K.A. Pio of Pietrelcina, a friar, priest, and mystic of the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, who experienced stigmata beginning in 1918 until his death in 1968. He was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint in 2002.
This is the first of two scripts for the series by writer Kim Newton. Her second, Quagmire (1996), was equally troubled and had to be hastily written. Newton was not invited back to the writing staff for the fourth season.