How well did the Catholic church look after its clergy?

An inexperienced and in many ways inept young priest is dumped in a dreary little village where mass sometimes has only one attendee (she sleeping with her married employer). Everybody complains about him. Both his spiritual and his physical health are cracking.

I realise there would be no film if his superiors had ordered him counselling and a rest cure. But did French bishops at the time really expect their rural clergy to plough such a lonely furrow, to go through the motions of ministering to their flock regardless?