A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

To what extent, if any does it matter whether Pelayo’s guest is an angel?

Angels should be seen as something miraculous and very beautiful, then why do Pelayo and Elizenda treat him with such harshness? Since the beginning the angel was seen as fragile and weak. He looked as if though he would die. My idea is that if he were an angel, then maybe he would have been treated better and maybe given more faith that something actually divine happened. Also, if he were an angel, then he would change every ones opinion about their beliefs and their religious standing. If he was not an angel, then it definitely shows that he would have been treated badly because through out the story he was treated like a circus animal because many things discredited him as being an angel. I very much disliked the two main characters because of how they treated “the angel,” shows how they are as humans. Since they treated the old man with ridicule, they are not truly sympathetic or religious in a sense because even if he was an ordinary man, they should have treated him with respect. It also shows how selfish they are in thinking of only money when they know the man is suffering from something that is making him weak. In the end, his departure was truly magical because to Elizenda he was just an imaginary dot. But to me it was his departure to freedom.
Some things that ran through my head were:
-Was the old man and angel or not?
-Was he in some way a guardian angel to the baby?
-Was his weakness coming form the lack of faith they had of him being an angel? Any religious meaning?
-Was it a test to humans to see if they were somehow truly humans?