Body of the Sanctioned

Second in the 2003 series, this chapter exposes the priest Cornello, who has been dressing up ordinary alchemy as holy wonders to bind the town of Reole to him. Recognizing the brothers as failed human transmuters, he tries to silence them, but Edward and Alphonse turn his own confession against him, reveal his stone as a fraud, and leave the disillusioned townsfolk to the mercy of the homunculi truly pulling the strings.

Seeing Edward's automail and Alphonse's empty armor, Cornello grasps that the pair paid alchemy's ultimate price trying to revive their mother, and Edward warns the grieving Rose away from that same path. When his machine-gun cane fails to stop them, the priest rallies the town against the brothers as heretics and parades a shrouded figure he claims is Rose's resurrected love, though only bird feathers litter the floor. Captured and stripped of his watch, Edward is locked away while Alphonse quietly makes off with the town's bell. Confronting his prisoner, Cornello brags of using false miracles to raise a fearless army and topple the government, unaware the stolen bell is broadcasting every word across Reole. Edward then breaks free, slices the priest's gun apart to prove his power owes nothing to the watch, and forces Cornello into the open before the stunned crowd. The counterfeit stone bursts and mangles the priest's arm, confirming the fake, and as the brothers depart a furious Rose demands to know what she has left to live for. Lust reveals the whole town was bait for real stone hunters, Gluttony devours Cornello, and Envy takes his shape to stage one final miracle.

The episode adapts material from four manga chapters, and its rough counterpart in the 2009 series is City of Heresy. On the English disc, Trisha Elric's voice is oddly credited only as Mother in the additional cast, while the Japanese credits list her full name, the only character given a full name on those releases.