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Philomena és una pel·lícula dramàtica britànica dirigida per Stephen Frears.

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Starring: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Anna Maxwell-Martin

Director: Stephen Frears

Judi Dench is on sparkling form as the titular Irishwoman whose child was snatched away by nuns at a time when giving birth out of wedlock was treated as a criminal act. Decades later, journalist Martin Sixsmith represents her only hope of finding her son (the film is based on his 2009 book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee).

Steve Coogan is suitably irascible as the former BBC correspondent, just publicly fired from his second career as a Labour government adviser, initially turning his nose up at the idea of pursuing a "human interest story". But Philomena, brimming with religious faith and optimism, is such a force of nature that he can't help but be swayed.

Director Stephen Frears exploits the odd-couple dynamic to great effect, not only generating wonderful comic moments but also bringing home the tragedy of Philomena's life. He might have given their journey to America a little more cinematic sweep, but it's no less inspiring for that. You'll laugh and you'll cry, sometimes both at the same time.

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Oscars 2014: Philomena review and trailer - Judi Dench is on sparkling form

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Starring: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Anna Maxwell-Martin Director: Stephen Frears Judi Dench is on sparkling form as the titular Irishwoman whose child was snatched away by nuns at a time when giving birth out of wedlock was treated as a criminal act.

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I've summed up some Information that attracted

my attention from Magdalene asylums:

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Marisa /Martin Sixsmith's article on the Daily Mail

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Marisa /Martin Sixsmith's article on the Daily Mail

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Two decades as a journalist reporting wars and disasters left me inured to suffering. Working in Whitehall under New Labour gave me a close-up view of the arrogance and cynicism of power.

As a result, I've always considered myself a hard-bitten sort. But some of the things I discovered on the quest that has detained me for the past five years - the depth of inhumanity and cruelty I stumbled across - made my jaw drop.

Early in 2004, I was approached by a woman who knew I had been a reporter. She said she had a friend who thought I could help her solve a family mystery. I told her that wasn't my sort of journalism; but she insisted and I went to the meeting.

The woman's friend was called Jane, a financial administrator from St Albans. She was in her late 30s and had been through an emotional experience.

Just before Christmas, her mother Philomena, tipsy on festive sherry, had revealed a secret she'd kept for 50 years: she had a son that she had never spoken about to anyone.

The reason for the secrecy was that he had been born illegitimate in Ireland at a time when such things were considered shameful and to be hushed up. Jane said her lost brother would be in his early 50s and probably living in the United States.

I still wasn't sure about getting involved, but a little later I met Philomena herself. What I discovered was a tale of the abuse of power, and how dogma and hypocrisy in high places can ruin the lives of so many people.

Philomena told me she had given birth in a convent at Roscrea in County Tipperary on July 5, 1952. She had been 18 when she had met a young man who bought her a toffee apple on a warm autumn evening at the county fair.

'I had just left convent school,' she said with a sigh. 'I went in there when my mother died, when I was six-and-a-half, and I left at 18 not knowing a thing about the facts of life. I didn't know where babies came from . . .'

When her pregnancy became obvious, her family had had Philomena 'put away' with the nuns.

After her baby, Anthony, was born, the Mother Superior threatened Philomena with damnation if ever she breathed a word about her 'guilty secret'. Terrified, she kept it quiet for more than half a century.

'All my life, I couldn't tell anyone,' she said. 'We were so brow-beaten, and it was such a sin. It was an awful thing to have a baby out of wedlock . . .

Over the years I would say, "I will tell them, I will tell them" - but it was so ingrained down deep in my heart that I mustn't tell anybody, that I never did.' I was intrigued to know why the nuns had been so insistent on the importance of silence and secrecy. The answer, almost certainly, lay in what had happened next.

Philomena was just one of thousands of women sent to Irish convents in the 1950s and 60s, taken away from their homes and families because the Roman Catholic Church said single mothers were moral degenerates who could not be allowed to keep their children.

Such was the power of the Church, and of its then leader, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, that the state bowed before its demands, ceding responsibility for the mothers and babies to the nuns.

For them, it was not only a matter of sin and morality, but one of pounds, shillings and pence.

Philomena told me about the hellish labour she was forced to perform in the convent laundries after her baby was born. Other girls were made to work in commercial greenhouses, making religious artefacts for sale, or stringing rosary beads until the wire cut grooves in their hands that would never disappear.

For the church, it was not only a matter of sin and morality, but one of pounds, shillings and pence

The Church may have opened its doors to 'fallen women'; but once they were inside, it exploited them mercilessly.

From speaking to mothers who were caught up in the convent homes, and by digging through government records, I realised that in the early Fifties the state was paying the nuns £1 a week for every one of the thousands of mothers they had in their care, and 2s 6d for every baby. In addition, the Church kept the proceeds from the girls' labour.

It was a source of significant income, and the nuns made sure the women stayed and worked for at least three years. They could get out only by paying £100 - an impossible amount for the vast majority.

In a fascinating echo of the debate going on today in America, the Irish government was trying to introduce a basic health and welfare service, which would have provided some safeguards for mothers and their babies.

But like the American right wing, the Church denounced the plan as 'opening the gates to Communism'.

John Charles McQuaid wrote to the Vatican: 'If adopted in law, it would constitute a readymade instrument for totalitarianism.'

The legislation was defeated, and the Church kept its malevolent stranglehold on the fate of the nation's orphans. The government was humiliated into tendering its resignation.

Even more shocking than the exploitation of the mothers was the exploitation of their children. The girls had to care for their babies during their three-year sentence in the convents - only then to be told that their child was being taken from them.

For women who had had so long to bond with their sons or daughters, the parting was terrible.

Philomena showed me the undertaking she had been forced to sign.

'I, Philomena Lee', it says, over a signature in a juvenile hand, 'do hereby relinquish full claim forever to my said child Anthony Lee and surrender him to Sister Barbara, Superioress of Sean Ross Abbey . . . to make my child available for adoption to any person she considers fit and proper, inside or outside the state.

'I further undertake never to attempt to see, interfere with or make any claim to the said child at any future time.' Philomena told me she had fought against signing the document.

'Oh God, my heart. I didn't want him to go. I just craved and begged them to please let me keep him.

'None of us wanted to give our babies up, none of us. But what else could we do? They just said: "You have to sign these papers."

The girls had to care for their babies during their three-year sentence in the convents - to be told that their child was being taken from them

'I remember it was a Sunday evening . . . I'm so sorry, I'm crying now when I think about it.'

Philomena cried when Anthony was taken from her, at Christmas 1955. She was not allowed to say goodbye, but she spotted him being bundled into the back of a black car.

When she shouted to him, the noise of the engine drowned out her voice, but as the car pulled away she is convinced he stood up in the seat and peered through the rear windscreen looking for her.

Afterwards, her father would not take her back because of the shame: he had told neighbours, friends and Philomena's own sisters that she had 'gone away' and that no one knew where she was.

So, in the end, the Church despatched her to work at one of its homes for delinquent boys in Liverpool.

Philomena trained as a nurse, got married in 1959 and had two more children. She longed to tell them about their brother, but couldn't.

She kept her secret but she never forgot her son. The thought of him gnawed at her; she worried how he was coping without her.

'Oh, he was gorgeous,' she told me. 'He was a lovely, gentle, quiet lad. All my life I have never forgotten him. I have prayed for him every day.

'Over the years I would so often say: "I wonder what he is doing. Has he gone to Vietnam? Is he on Skid Row?" I just didn't know what had happened to him."

Finally - without telling anyone - Philomena embarked on a lonely, desperate search to find her son. She went back to the convent in Roscrea several times and asked the nuns to help her.

Each time they refused, brandishing her sworn undertaking that she would 'never attempt to see' her child.

When I agreed to help look for Anthony in 2004, we had little to go on. We knew his date and place of birth, but his name, Anthony Lee, would certainly have been changed by his adoptive parents.

Philomena had been told that her son would be taken to the United States, but little else.

The quest became more fascinating than any detective story: its twists and turns, the unexpected coincidences that finally led us to Philomena's lost child, are the backbone of my book. But the life story that the detective work uncovered is truly remarkable.

'Over the years I would say: "I wonder what he is doing. Has he gone to Vietnam? Is he on Skid Row?"'

Early on in the search, I realised that the Irish Catholic hierarchy had been engaged in what amounted to an illicit baby trade. Archbishop McQuaid regarded single mothers as sinners, and believed their children would be safer away from them.

But he prevented social workers from intervening 'because they take no cognizance of the gravity of the woman's sin . . . her lust and selfgratification . . . and her fall is all too often condoned and excused.'

Even worse, he was horrified that the children might be given to Protestants. McQuaid insisted unbendingly that adopting couples should be practising Roman Catholics.

But there were no proper checks on their background, as long as they had the money to pay the 'donation' the Church demanded.

The result was that the 'orphans' were sold to the highest bidder, however unsuitable they might be, and thousands were bought by wealthy Americans at a going rate of between $2,000 and $3,000.

Philomena's son was one of them. When rumours of the Church's role began to emerge decades later, much of the incriminating paperwork was hastily destroyed, and even today the Church guards its adoption archives fiercely.

It took a painstaking trawl through passport records, and the piecing together of fleeting references in old newspaper articles, before we discovered that Anthony Lee had been offered to a middle-class couple from St Louis, Missouri.

Marge and Doc Hess certainly fulfilled the McQuaid criteria: they were good Catholics, a professional couple in their early 40s, and Marge's brother was himself a bishop. The Hesses already had three sons, but they wanted a daughter.

In the course of my research, I came into possession of Marge Hess's diaries.

Their carefullywritten entries gave me a startling insight into everything from the clothes and lip gloss she wore to the emotions that overwhelmed her as she studied herself in the mirror before setting off to Ireland.

In August 1955, Marge Hess scoured the Irish mother and baby homes for a little girl.

Her diary records her first impressions of the shy three-year- old, Mary McDonald, who was offered to her by the Mother Superior of the Roscrea convent. And it reveals the twist of fate that led her to adopt Anthony Lee.

When Marge leaned down to pick up her new daughter in the convent nursery, she was charmed to see Mary's best friend, a little boy in baggy trousers, come running to give her a kiss.

Marge fell for him at once. That evening, she called her husband in St Louis and asked if it would be all right to bring two children back instead of one.

Anthony's unthinking show of affection for Marge was the random nudge of chance that changed his life. By the end of 1955, he and Mary had been transported from rural Ireland to a new existence and new identities in the New World.

He was renamed Michael Hess and grew up to be an 'A' student. He was physically attractive and gifted, ran cross-country and sang in school musical productions.

But he was haunted by halfremembered visions of his first three years in Ireland, and by a lifelong yearning to find his mother.

He remembered her touch and the way she sang to him, and he embarked on repeated fruitless attempts to find her, tragically unaware that Philomena, too, was pining and searching for him.

Both came back to the convent and pleaded for information, but the nuns - perhaps ashamed of their role in Ireland's baby trade - refused to help.

Michael became a successful lawyer. He was spotted by the leaders of Ronald Reagan's Republican Party and brought into the White House.

As a rising star of the Republican National Committee, he masterminded the party's electoral strategy, brokering the redistricting (gerrymandering) reforms that kept them in power for over a decade.

When George Bush Senior became president, he made Michael his Chief Legal Counsel.

But Michael Hess was gay, and in a Republican Party that was rabidly homophobic, he was obliged to conceal his sexuality.

He was tormented by the double life he was forced to lead, and by the fact that his work was entrenching in power a party that victimised his friends and lovers.

When the president gave in to conservative demands to block funds for Aids research, Mike was plunged into despair.

He was tormented, too, by the absence of his mother and by the orphan's sense of helplessness.

He didn't know where he came from, didn't know who he was, or how he should live. He felt unloved by his adoptive father and brothers, living in fear that the stern, critical Doc Hess would discover his sexuality.

As a teenager, Mike had rowed with Doc, and Doc had told him he would no longer support him or pay his university fees. Mike suspected Doc knew he was gay.

As a practising Roman Catholic, he also felt guilt over his sexuality. He had a series of stormy relationships and was deeply disturbed when a spurned lover burned himself to death.

But Mike was loved by his adoptive mother and by Mary, the little girl who was plucked with him from the Roscrea convent and became his lifelong friend and 'sister'.

He found some happiness in a long-term relationship with a caring, loving partner - but he could never be at peace.

He went back to Roscrea, first in 1977 and again in 1993, to plead with the nuns to tell him how to find his mother. They turned him away.

On his return to the U.S., he plunged into alcohol, drugs and unbridled sexual indulgence.

It was as if the void he felt in his life was driving him into dangerous practices that put his reputation and career in jeopardy. For a gay man in the decade of Aids, it was close to courting a death sentence.

By the late 1980s, Mike found himself embarking on ever-more-frequent lost weekends in the gay bars and clubs of Washington and other cities.

His behaviour brought with it the terrible fear of exposure that would destroy him as a senior Republican official, but he could not stop himself.

On one of his lost weekends, he became infected with the HIV virus. He and Pete, his long-term partner, agonised over their future.

Mike kept his illness secret, refusing to tell his adoptive parents and urging Mary to tell no one. Pete stood by him, but Michael's health began to deteriorate. Fearing the worst, they flew to Roscrea in 1993 to make an emotional appeal to the nuns.

Mike found himself embarking on ever-more-frequent lost weekends in the gay bars and clubs of Washington and other cities

But still the nuns refused to tell him where he could find his mother, or indeed that her sisters and brother - his aunts and uncle - were living just a few miles down the road.

In desperation, Michael asked the Mother Superior if he could at least be buried in the convent if he were to die: he would put enough information on his gravestone to help his mother find out about his life 'if ever she comes looking for me'.

As we know (but Michael did not), Philomena was looking for him, returning to Roscrea, seeking traces of her son . . .

The hunt for Michael took me through state and Church archives, through adoption agencies, American university records and Republican Party sources before it led to the end of the trail and the story's poignant, unexpected conclusion.

It threw up a Hardyesque tale of coincidences and missed connections; and a powerful indictment of two historical eras: 1950s Ireland and 1980s America.

As we discovered, the nuns did agree to let Michael be buried in Roscrea - in return for a large donation to Church funds - and he did, indeed, put a 'message from beyond the grave' on his marble headstone, a message that ultimately allowed us to trace the path of his life.

'Michael Hess, a man of two nations and many talents,' the inscription reads. 'Born July 5, 1952, Sean Ross Abbey, Roscrea. Died August 15, 1995, Washington DC.'

Before his remains were flown to Ireland, the White House had staged a lavish memorial service for him. Many of the Republican Party leaders were there, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan sent personal messages of sympathy.

But nothing was said about his sexuality. Afterwards, Doc Hess had met Pete, Michael's partner, and was shocked to learn both that his son had been gay and that he had died of Aids.

Ultimately, my search brought me to an overgrown grave in a quiet country convent. In addition to Michael and Philomena's story, I had discovered the thousands of other lost 'orphans' whose lives were changed for ever by the greed and hypocrisy of Church and state.

Like Michael, many of them are still looking for their parents and, through them, for their identity.

Now in her 70s, Philomena is remarkably devoid of bitterness. She has started to go to Mass again. But she blames herself for everything - for giving her son away and for not speaking out about him earlier, when things could have been different.

'If only, Martin, if only. I curse myself every time I think of it. If only I'd mentioned it all those years ago, maybe he wouldn't . . .

'Oh Lord, it makes my heart ache. I'm sure there are lots of women to this very day who are the same as me; they haven't said anything . . . It is the biggest regret of my life and I have to bear that. It is my own fault, and now it is my woe.'

Knowing what happened to her son has at least resolved the doubts that haunted Philomena for half a century. I have stood with her at the side of his grave and heard how she speaks to him after the separation of all the years.

'Thank God you are back home again,' she says. 'You're here where I can visit you now.

But you came to this place and no one told you anything. No one told you I was looking for you and that I loved you, my son. How different it all could have been . . .'

The Lost Child Of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith is published by Macmillan £12.99. To order a copy (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.

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Stolen from his mother - and sold to the highest bidder

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Two decades as a journalist reporting wars and disasters left me inured to suffering. Working in Whitehall under New Labour gave me a close-up view of the arrogance and cynicism of power. As a result, I've always considered myself a hard-bitten sort.

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In the growing panoply of Irish religious villains on screen, none is more chillingly depicted than Sr Hildegarde McNulty in the movie Philomena.

Portrayed as a vindictive younger nun who forces Philomena Lee to give up her three-year-old son for adoption in 1955, she is shown in the film's climactic scene as mellowing nothing with age.

Accused by the journalist Martin Sixsmith - played by Steve Coogan - of thwarting attempts to reunite mother and son, she responds: "Let me tell you something. I have kept my vow of chastity my whole life. Self-denial and mortification of the flesh is what brings us closer to God. Those girls have nobody to blame except themselves."

Even in a film that brings the viewer through an emotional wringer, the scene has the power to shock. Except the meeting couldn't have happened. Sr Hildegarde died in 1995. Mr Sixsmith did not start helping Philomena Lee find her son until 2004. Tragically Anthony Lee, who became Michael Hess, died from Aids before mother and son could be reunited.

The Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who ran the mother and baby home at Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea have accused the filmmakers of being misleading and say the real Sr Hildegarde helped many mothers to become reunited with their children.

The filmmakers Pathé responded by stating that Philomena is "not a documentary. The factual scenarios have been changed but we believe the substance of the story to be materially true."

Strong emotions
The real Sr Hildegarde provokes strong emotions in those who knew her, as judged by contributors to the RTÉ Liveline radio programme recently.

Manus O'Riordan, whose late wife was born in the abbey, said Sr Hildegarde lied to his wife about where her mother was from and he said there was a "sense of evil" about her. Another caller who was born in the abbey said she found Sr Hildegarde to be co-operative.

Audio clips of a RTÉ interview recorded in 1986 with Sr Hildegarde portray a woman weeping over many of the mothers who were in her care.

The controversy has, if anything, enhanced the draw of the filmwhich has taken £7.1 million (€8.5 million) at the UK box office and more than €1 million in Ireland to date.

Mr Sixsmith's book says both Lee and her son, who become chief counsel to the Reagan and Bush administrations, visited the abbey looking for each other in 1977, yet Sr Hildegarde never passed the information on. However, the congregation's spokeswoman, Sr Julie Rose, says there is no record of any meeting between Lee and the nuns in 1977. Neither is there any record of meetings between the nuns and Hess and his adoptive sister, Mary, who was also born in the abbey. "We do hold a view as regards the veracity of a number of statements in the book," she said.

Mr Sixsmith said Philomena Lee was meticulous in keeping in touch with the abbey over the years. His book contains a photograph of Hess with Sr Hildegarde at the abbey in 1993 when he was dying from Aids. He died in 1995.

Another point of controversy is the claim that the nuns were selling babies, through the cover of donations, to rich Catholic couples in the United States.

The allegation is denied by Sr Julie. "No children were sold by any mother or the congregation, to any party, nor did the congregation receive any monies in relation to adoptions while we were running the mother and baby home."

The investigative journalist Mike Milotte, who wrote the book Banished Babies, says Sr Hildegarde had admitted that adoptive donations constituted the largest source of income to the abbey. She is described in the book as one of the "three most important people in the Irish adoption picture" and the nuns at Roscrea sent 450 children to America.

Mr Sixsmith estimated that the Hess family in St Louis paid about $2,000 for Michael and Mary at the time, an enormous sum in 1955. Furthermore, when a dying Hess requested to be buried in the grounds of the abbey, the nuns solicited a substantial donation from him.

Sr Julie has pointed out that the congregation ran the home on behalf of the State at a time when single mothers were often shunned by their families.

When asked what she would have to say to women such as Lee now, she responded: "We understand that it was a distressing and traumatic experience for them to give up their children for adoption and we feel great sympathy for them."

Absent from the statement is any expression of sorrow or remorse, according to Mr Sixsmith. "They could just say 'sorry'. These things were done in a different time, but you would have thought that an apology surely would be the first step in healing all these wounds. Sympathy is not the same as saying sorry."

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Nuns say critical scene in 'Philomena' was made up

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In the growing panoply of Irish religious villains on screen, none is more chillingly depicted than Sr Hildegarde McNulty in the movie Philomena. Portrayed as a vindictive younger nun who forces Philomena Lee to give up her three-year-old son for adoption in 1955, she is shown in the film's climactic scene as mellowing nothing with age.

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I find these articles interesting

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If you Google the recently released movie Philomena, you will find commentaries like the following: "Philomena is a film that's left grown men sobbing: the heart-rending story of a naïve Irish girl whose illegitimate son is taken from her at the age of three and adopted by American parents - only for the two of them to spend the rest of their lives searching for each other. What makes it inspirational is that it's all true" ( Daily Mail).

The movie is already a commercial success, having grossed US$34 million in the first month of its release.

The movie has attracted controversy (very favourable reviews in the UK but some criticisms elsewhere), generally reinforcing strongly negative perceptions about the role of the Catholic Church in past adoptions (especially adoptions in Ireland). It is also damning (with one exception) in its portrayal of the (named) nuns involved.

The movie is an adaptation of the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (written mostly in the form of a novel), which I read following its release in 2009. The author ( Martin Sixsmith) states in the second page of the Prologue that "everything that follows is true or reconstructed to the best of my ability".

I found the book believable in most aspects, though I did have a gut reaction (I grew up in Ireland, am agnostic, and am now in my sixties.) that some of the stereotyping in the book was "laid on a bit thick". The book describes a Dickensian Irish adoption system (back then) with deeply negative attitudes to illegitimate births, and portrays the nuns as generally stern and uncaring (e.g. in telling Philomena p.435 "I have no idea what you want from us", Mother Barbara said. "You gave away your child and the Church found a home for him. The Church acts on its duty of charity. Sinners like you should be grateful.")

I felt the "artistic licence" was taken to the limit in a scene (p. 434) describing Philomena's first return visit to Ireland in 1956: "In her hand she clutched a bag with her passport and ticket, and a bunch of photographs. When they made port in Dublin she said a Hail Mary. The Irish Customs Officers instructed to question girls travelling alone on Irish passports, picked her out as the passengers disembarked. "So were you over there for an abortion then? the senior officer asked. Did you go and kill your child?" The scene beggars belief. Passports were never required for passenger movements between Britain and Ireland, and were rarely carried back then. Abortion also did not become legal and widely available in the UK until the passing of the Abortion Act 1967.

I had three main reactions, when I recently saw the movie. While the movie was well-structured, well-acted, and captivating, I found Judi Dench's "Irish" accent unconvincing (she is no Meryl Streep when it comes to accents). My main shock, however, was the extent to which the movie depicted core events very differently to the book and to some key observations from an interview with Philomena Lee herself. (This is well worth a watch and shows her to be an articulate 80 year old rather than the "simpleton" portrayed in the movie.)

The movie has many highly emotional scenes but many events concerning Philomena and Sixsmith's search for her son either never happened at all or happened quite differently to their portrayal in the book.

There are two key emotional scenes in the movie that I have no reason to dispute. The first shows the young Philomena in 1952 screaming in pain during a forceps delivery. She is given no anaesthetic because the nuns believe she should suffer for her sin. The second (set in 1955 and confirmed by Philomena herself) shows her greatly distressed, as she watches from a convent window as her toddler son (Anthony) is taken away by an American woman.

Key footage of the visit by Sixsmith and Philomena to Sean Ross Abbey in 2004, however, is clearly contrived and at odds with the book. In these movie scenes the nuns are portrayed as polite but obstructive and very official.

In contrast, the book (p.441) portrays the nuns as near saintly. "The nuns were lovely. None of them had been there in the 1950s: Mother Barbara and Sister Hildegard were dead - we photographed their graves....The current Mother Superior was a friendly, educated woman from the outskirts of Liverpool, who devoted her whole life to the care of disadvantaged and disabled people, making Sean Ross a haven for youngsters with cerebral palsy and other debilitating conditions". According to the book, Philomena's daughter Jane also came along, a detail left out of the movie.

The movie also shows Sixsmith noticing a signed picture of a Hollywood star on the Abbey wall. He asks what Jayne Mansfield was doing there. A nun corrects him - it's actually Jane Russell. The movie gives the impression that Russell adopted a baby from Sean Ross Abbey. She did not. In reality, Jane Russell informally adopted a son from a woman living in London, but originating in Derry, Northern Ireland. There was subsequently a major scandal and a court case, after which Russell was allowed to formalise the adoption.

About half the movie dwells on events involving a trip to the US by Sixsmith and Philomena, seeking out what happened to her son following his adoption. Searching the internet and official records, Sixsmith finds that Anthony's name was changed to Michael Hess. Michael grew up to be chief legal counsel to the Republican National Committee and an official in the Reagan administration. He was also gay and had contracted AIDS.

The problem is that the joint trip never took place at all. Sixsmith, according to his book, was able to conduct his research from the UK, followed up by a short trip to Washington (alone and without Philomena). The many emotional scenes involving Philomena's alleged search in the US are entirely faked.

According to the movie, it was Sixsmith (during his fictional trip to the US with Philomena) who finds out that Anthony had died in 1995 and had searched for his birth mother. Philomena, while in the US, is shown proof of his death from Sixsmith's laptop. According to the book, however, Philomena was first told about Anthony's death in a phone call from a nun in 2004. (On their visit to Sean Ross Abbey the party had photographed a grave belonging to a Michael Hess. They later noticed that he had the same date of birth as Anthony and asked the nuns to investigate if Michael and Anthony were one and the same person, which was confirmed a week later.)

The movie ends back at the convent (another contrived scene). Sixsmith confronts one elderly nun, Sister Hildegard, who he had allegedly glimpsed during his earlier visit and had suspected of withholding information. The nun is unrepentant, and responds: "Let me tell you something. I have kept my vow of chastity my whole life. Self-denial and mortification of the flesh is what brings us closer to God. Those girls have nobody to blame except themselves." Philomena subsequently locates Anthony/Michael's grave (where his ashes had been interred in 1996 according to the book).

There is no doubt that the nuns are unfairly portrayed in the movie. All the scenes involving the seemingly formidable Sister Hildegard are contrived. Sister Hildegard in real life died in 1995. This is acknowledged in the book, so that she was long dead by the time of Sixsmith, Philomena and daughter Jane's visit in 2004. Critics of the movie say it uses faked scenes of Sister Hildegard to personify her as the principal villain and embodiment of all the Catholic Church's most vicious tendencies.

A major omission of the movie was its lack of reference to Philomena's growing-up. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was six, and her father could not cope. Philomena and her three sisters were put into a convent orphanage, which he rarely visited. The nuns provided a good education, though she was left ignorant about sexual matters, and became pregnant shortly after finishing school. She was taken in by Sean Ross Abbey after her family disowned her, with the nuns providing the only available refuge. The movie also fails to mention that, two weeks after her son Anthony was adopted, the nuns arranged paid employment for Philomena at a school in Liverpool so that she could get on with her life, eventually becoming a nurse.

Some reviewers suggest that the adoption of Philomena's child was forced. The book notes that Philomena signed adoption papers in June 1955 and the adoption took place the following December. Philomena would have liked to have kept her child but has publicly acknowledged that this would have been impossible.

Brendan O'Reilly is a retired commonwealth public servant with a background in economics and accounting. He is currently pursuing private business interests.

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If you Google the recently released movie Philomena, you will find commentaries like the following: "Philomena is a film that's left grown men sobbing: the heart-rending story of a naïve Irish girl whose illegitimate son is taken from her at the age of three and adopted by American parents - only for the two of them to spend the rest of their lives searching for each other.

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As I couldn't wait and being afraid the the movie could be out of programming, I decided to see it by my own.

Phylomena is a absoluteley recommendable manily for three reasons:

1.- The plot, based in real events.

2.- The performance made by Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, simply delicious.

3.- The improvement of our self-confidence in the listening skill due to the clear diction of the actors.

I also appreciated the soundtrak.

I would

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about the tittle "Philomena": it comes from the greek

meaning "loved" or "dear". I suposse it is refered as well to her as to her sun, because "philomena" in greek can be a femenin noun or too a neutral plural noun.

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A SURVIVOR of an Irish Mother and Baby Home took to the red carpet as a blockbuster movie based on her experiences premiered in London.
Philomena Lee, whose tragic life story has been made into a critically acclaimed film starring Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, walked side by side with the stars at the film launch this month.

There she revealed that while life was tough in the church-run institution she did not expect any compensation for her suffering, claiming it was not as brutal as the Magdalene Laundries.

Commenting just hours before she took to the red carpet with Dame Judi for the British premiere of , the Limerick native said: "I worked in a laundry for three and a half years, but it was not like the Magdalene Laundries.

"We did the laundry for the nuns and the children and ourselves. It was not commercial laundry. But the Magdalenes took it in from the churches and hotels and all over the place."

Like many women who spent time in a Mother and Baby Home, Ms Lee was taken in after falling pregnant out of wedlock.

Her son was then taken from her before being adopted by a wealthy American couple; a fate campaigners say befell "thousands" of Irish women.

Ms Lee's comments come a week after the son of another woman who spent years in a Mother and Baby Home called on the Irish Government and the Catholic Church to offer redress to victims.

"It seems very wrong to me that women from Laundries are being compensated, but not women whose children were farmed like animals," Londoner Martin Husk said.

Despite her reluctance to ask for compensation, Ms Lee, who has lived in Britain since her early 20s, was scathing about the Catholic Church and the scandals that have engulfed it in Ireland over the past decade.

"It is horrendous what went on, but at that time we were all so ignorant and had a blind faith in the Catholic religion," she said.

"You believed every single thing they told you. Everything you learned in the catechism you believed. And the Pope was infallible."

Asked if she now feels embarrassed by the country of her birth, Ms Lee said: "Not really, because I have lived here so long. And I never brought my children up as Catholics."

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Philomena Lee joins Judi Dench for British premiere of Philomena | The Irish Post

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A SURVIVOR of an Irish Mother and Baby Home took to the red carpet as a blockbuster movie based on her experiences premiered in London. Philomena Lee, whose tragic life story has been made into a critically acclaimed film starring Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, walked side by side with the stars at the film launch this month.

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Tonight at 20.50 at Babel? Cinema and Dinner 13€?

Today at 17.30?

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More about Philomena, this is the soundtrack: "Anthony's Story"

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Philomena original score by Alexandre Desplat - Track 16. Anthony's Story

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Composer Alexandre Desplant has contributed scores to dozens of movies over the last decade.

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Composer Alexandre Desplat may not have the same name recognition to mainstream audiences as Hans Zimmer, but his body of work speaks for itself. The French born Desplat, a five-time Oscar nominee, has contributed scores to dozens of movies over the last decade, including "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," "The King's Speech," "The Queen," "Zero Dark Thirty," "Moonrise Kingdom," "Fantastic Mr. Fox," "Argo," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Tree of Life," "Julie & Julia" and many more.

His latest composition is "Philomena," Stephen Frears' true-life drama about an elderly woman (Dame Judi Dench) who, along with a disgraced journalist (film co-writer Steve Coogan), searches for the son who was taken from her and put up for adoption by a group of Catholic nuns in 1952. Desplat's score, a mix of haunting waltzes and carnival melodies, is as understated as Frears' film, and never forces emotions onto the audience. "We tried to keep it restrained and elegant," Desplat explained.

With "Philomena" out in limited release now, HuffPost Entertainment spoke to Desplat about his contribution to Frears' film, as well as his other famous scores.
Desplat's first Oscar nomination came for "The Queen," which was also the first film he made with Stephen Frears.
Desplat: To be nominated is always unexpected. Nominations come or they don't come, you just try to write the best music you can. If it's not recognized, that doesn't mean you're a bad composer. Of course, though, the first nomination was huge for me. Being nominated for an Oscar is a big deal. Suddenly, you're in the gang. You belong to the family. More important, people see those films, so they hear your music. Some movies, you might think you did a great job, but the movie isn't seen. That's where people can hear your work.
"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" (2009) Desplat scored his second Oscar nomination for 2008's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," but it was "Twilight" that brought his work to an even bigger audience. The second film in the blockbuster franchise earned $709 million worldwide.
Desplat: I had worked with director Chris Weitz before, and he's a great friend. The nature of the previous "Twilight" score was so different from what Chris wanted. There was no danger there: I could create something completely different, but it was not attached to any theme or orchestral ensemble. I wrote "New Moon" very fast -- in maybe just a few weeks.
The following year brought Desplat his fourth Oscar nomination, this time for "The King's Speech." It also provided him with his biggest film ever: "Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 1."
Desplat: Each movie has its own DNA that you have to understand and analyze. There was nothing for Geoffrey Rush in "The King's Speech"; he didn't have a theme. It was all about the king and his situation. The way the music evolves throughout the film is similar to the way the character evolves. When there's a lead character, I try to follow the trajectory of their psychological moves. I try to have something that goes from the beginning of the film to the end of the film. The music can evolve with him. Sometimes, it's the other way around. Sometimes, the music has to show right away the hidden emotions of the character. In "The King's Speech," the music starts getting a shape as the character starts getting a shape himself.
"Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Parts 1 & 2 (2010, 2011) Combined, the final "Harry Potter" films earned over $2.2 billion worldwide.
Desplat: The first challenge was to not be overwhelmed by John Williams' presence. I have worshipped him since I was 15. He's one of the most influential composers in my life, so the first thing for me to do upon starting "Harry Potter" was to get rid of that huge shadow over me. I was lucky enough that, in the first "Deathly Hallows," director David Yates didn't want to use "Hedwig's Theme," the famous John Williams cue, because the kids were grown ups now and they were not in Hogwarts during the first episode. Funny enough, though, before I started working on the film, I didn't know that. I had played around with John Williams' theme, making different versions of it. I didn't use any of them, though, because the theme only comes two or three times in very little portions. I was enjoying the arrangements I was doing, but there was no use for them. We couldn't use it. We did, however, use the theme in the last film.

"Harry Potter" was the first time I was working on a franchise that was an object. It's a movie that has been seen everywhere in the world. That was a new challenge for me: to write music that can be understood from Alaska to Australia.
The first time Desplat worked with Anderson, on 2009's "Fantastic Mr. Fox," he received an Oscar nomination. He returned to collaborate with the director for 2012's "Moonrise Kingdom."
Desplat: There's an aesthetic to Wes Anderson movies that one can describe, so I just tried to stay within that. I worked very closely with Wes. We really sat down together at the piano in my studio and we would play around with things, just experiment together. It's a lot of fun. It's a very different process from any other director who I have worked with. Wes and I really try to play within a type of orchestral combination. He's so genuine when we're working together. He's so excited and so inventive. It's a great honor to work with Wes.

( The pair worked together again for the 2014 release "The Grand Budapest Hotel," which Desplat noted had more score than either of his previous collaborations with Anderson.)
Desplat's fifth Oscar nomination came for Ben Affleck's "Argo," one of his two 2012 CIA movies (the other being Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty").
Desplat: The great thing about these movies is that they're classic in the writing, but with very modern directing. I always try to grab the deepest core of the film and the dramaturge. That is what drives me, even more than the images. By figuring that out, I was able to find two different voices. That's what I did.

This was my first film with Ben, and my first time with Kathryn. The first time was always difficult. You have to build bridges and try to reassure the directors that you are not there to have your music playing loud, where it overwhelms the film. There's always this fear from directors that the composer wants to be the director. You learn through the years to approach that from a different angle. In a few months apart, I was able to work with two directors who had actually not used a lot of scores in their previous films, and where the scores were also not really predominant. These two films, though, it was necessary that the music was present, and I guess that's why it turned out so well.
"Philomena" marks the fifth time Desplat and Frears have partnered for a film. Their relationship continues to flourish as a sixth feature, Frears' untitled Lance Armstrong biography, is in the offing as well. "He's been one of my idols since I started composing, so I cherish the moments with him," Desplat said.
Desplat: On "Philomena," as I just said, it's called "Philomena." It's about her and what she suffered through for 50 years. She's over 70 years old, a simple woman, and the music had to reflect that in the most delicate way. That's something my European sensitivity most likely takes me toward. I could have almost said that we don't need any music. The characters and the directing is so beautiful already. You can't overwhelm a story with a loud score or a melody that could be too romantic or pushy. The emotions are so strong already that you just have to push a little bit and it goes as far as you can go. If you push more, it becomes cheesy.
Listen to Desplat's full score for "Philomena" on Spotify.

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This Man Wrote One Of Your Favorite Film Scores

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Composer Alexandre Desplat may not have the same name recognition to mainstream audiences as Hans Zimmer, but his body of work speaks for itself.

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Carme. WELL DONE!!!! Very well read

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YOU ARE SIMPLY THE BEST, FOLKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Josep, if you send me your piece of writing, I'll correct it.

Adelina, why can't you record yourself in Vocaroo?

It would be great to listen to you.

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I don't like my accent but...

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I don't have room...

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Based on the 2009 investigative book by BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, PHILOMENA focuses on the efforts of Philomena Lee (Dench), mother to a boy conceived out of wedlock - something her Irish-Catholic community didn't have the highest opinion of - and given away for adoption in the United States.

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Next Sunday we will be able to listen to an interview with the real Philomena on BBC Radio2.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zd3s9

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Adelina

I´ve tried to record the plot, but it has been really impossible; so without voice:

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Rafa

Here we are.

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/11/19/judi-dench-in-philomena-the-mom-who-never-gave-up/

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The film allows a thought of adoption problems

when mothers were forced to do it. Moreover, it can open

a discussion about the nuns power

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while trying to fix up my microphone, a little bit more of the real story...

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For decades, Philomena Lee didn't think there was anything interesting about her life story.

After becoming pregnant out of wedlock in Ireland in 1951, a teenage Lee was disowned by her father and sent to live and work in a convent alongside other unmarried mothers. When her son Anthony was three years old, the convent's nuns, in exchange for a generous donation, gave him up for adoption to Americans, who were told he was an orphan. A distraught Lee watched from an upstairs window as strangers drove off with her child.

For the next 50 years, Lee told nobody about Anthony. That's just how life went for sinners in the Catholic Church, she thought.

But one day, she told her secret to her daughter, Jane Libberton, who quickly began the search for Lee's long-lost child. It wasn't easy: Irish law makes it extremely difficult for adopted children to learn about their parents and birth records, and the nuns at the convent where Lee lived stonewalled her requests for information. Eventually, Libberton pieced together the identity of Anthony: Renamed Michael Hess by his American parents, he'd grown up to be a top attorney for the Republican National Committee.

By the time Lee and Libberton solved the mystery, however, they were too late: Hess had died of AIDS in 1995. His ashes had been buried at the the convent at Hess's request-he hoped that his mother would return and find him. Just as the nuns wouldn't give Lee and Libberton any answers about what happened to Anthony, Hess himself had journeyed to Ireland to ask about his mother-with no luck.

Acclaim and Oscar nominations for Philomena, based off journalist Martin Sixsmith's book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, have brought international attention to the stories of Lee and the thousands of women just like her. Last month, Lee partnered with the Adoption Rights Alliance to launch The Philomena Project, which will advocate for changes to Ireland's adoption-records policies and help connect mothers and children separated by the country's history of forced adoptions. In late January, Lee, Libberton, and Mari Steed, U.S. coordinator of the ARA, traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with senators and diplomats about the project, and they spoke to The Atlantic about the film, faith, and forgiveness.
This interview has been condensed and edited. When you started your journey a decade ago, did you ever think it would bring you to Washington?
Philomena: No way whatsoever.

Jane: When mom first met Martin, she didn't even really want it to be a book, did you? You didn't really want the story.

Jane: Martin was a political journalist, and he wasn't particularly angry. He's seen all sort of things in his career. Steve asked a particular question of whether you forgive the nuns, and you did. I said, "I don't," so he took the anger and put it in his character. Martin wasn't an angry character, he was a journalist.
Were the nuns as big of an obstacle in learning about Anthony as they appeared in the movie?
Jane: When we went the first time, they didn't help. They were very pleasant very nice.

Philomena: Lovely.

Jane: We sat down to tea like this. We knew Anthony's grave was there. But they didn't give us any information about the American side of things. When we went back the second year, I'd said we found Anthony's partner and we found Mary, who was adopted with Anthony, and then they went to the cupboard and gave me papers they could have given me before. Without those papers, there never would have been a book. They just weren't helpful.
Did they not fully understand?
Jane: Oh, they understood. [The character] Sister Margaret was [based off] the present-day nun we met with Martin. She was delightful. She's English like I am, so she knew where I was coming from, because in the United Kingdom, at 18 years old, you can find out your history if you're adopted. In Ireland, you can't. I didn't get angry with her. I was angry, but I didn't shout out her like Steve Coogan shouts at Sister Hildegard [in the movie]. She knew exactly what I meant when I said, "To me, what you're doing is completely wrong." She did sit there kind of stony-faced. She was in the position where she felt she couldn't give me the information because that's what she'd been taught by the Church. And we're only talking about seven years ago. It wasn't a long time ago.
Did you have a sense of how widespread this was?

Philomena: You mean everybody having babies? Women having babies?
The forced adoptions across the country, I mean.
Philomena: I was a teenager at the time. I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know about babies being gone abroad and getting donations for them. I didn't know the first thing about that. How would we know? The nuns wouldn't tell you. We were Catholic, we went to church, we went to mass, that's all we did. I worked in the laundry for three and a half years.

Mari: There were many Irish families who might have had a mother and baby home just up the road and didn't even know it. They just knew it was the nuns who ran their business. Nobody really knew what went on behind the walls or dared ask. I think they had an inkling, it just wasn't discussed.

Philomena: And often the mother's parents were glad to get rid of you, because it was such a shame on them. We were ostracized so much. We had to lose our identities. I wasn't Philomena Lee anymore. I got a name called Marcella. For three and a half years, I was Marcella. Some of the women now come forward and say, "Did you remember me when I was there?" I wouldn't have remembered them because they'd have another name. From the day I went in till the day I came out I was Marcella, not Philomena Lee.
Tell me about the first time you told Jane about Anthony.

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The Real-Life Philomena: 'You See So Much Hurt Caused by Anger'

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For decades, Philomena Lee didn't think there was anything interesting about her life story. After becoming pregnant out of wedlock in Ireland in 1951, a teenage Lee was disowned by her father and sent to live and work in a convent alongside other unmarried mothers.

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Philomena is something yearned for and lusted after by film-makers and journalists alike - a really good story. It's a powerful and heartfelt drama, based on a real case, with a sledgehammer emotional punch and a stellar performance from Judi Dench, along with an intelligently judged supporting contribution from Steve Coogan. Yet the film's apparent simplicity and force come to us flavoured with subtle nuances and subtexts, left there by the people who brought this story to the public.

Philomena is something yearned for and lusted after by film-makers and journalists alike - a really good story. It's a powerful and heartfelt drama, based on a real case, with a sledgehammer emotional punch and a stellar performance from Judi Dench, along with an intelligently judged supporting contribution from Steve Coogan. Yet the film's apparent simplicity and force come to us flavoured with subtle nuances and subtexts, left there by the people who brought this story to the public.

At its centre is a tough-minded, elderly Irish woman, Philomena Lee (Dench), and her battle to find out what happened to the baby boy taken away from her in the 1950s. As a teenage unmarried mother, she had been forced to put up her child for adoption, while working in one of the Irish Republic's penitential Magdalene laundries, which survived until the 1980s. These cottage industries of shame and self-hate were run by nuns and priests who had a nasty secret of their own: they discreetly accepted substantial sums of money from America's childless Catholic couples. It was a baby-farm business model that ran on cruelty and hypocrisy. Peter Mullan's 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters was a memorably fierce denunciation.

But the film is also about a former media apparatchik's personal need for a redemptive act of goodness after being mired in the shabby and inglorious world of political spin. And at a level below that, the film could also be about a comedian and actor working through his own strong feelings about what he feels to be two malign institutions: the Church and Fleet Street.

Coogan is the producer and co-writer of Philomena, and he plays Martin Sixsmith, the former BBC correspondent turned New Labour political adviser who, in 2002, was ousted from his job in an unedifying row over smear allegations and a leaked email. (The film is adapted from Sixsmith's own book.) Unhappily returning to work as a freelance journalist, he chances across the extraordinary story of Philomena, played by Dench with such effortless poise, serio-comic charm and heart-tugging potency. Sixsmith takes Philomena to America on a mission to track down her lost son.

Such a savvy operator as Sixsmith must surely have been aware of the case of Labour frontbencher Clare Short, who in 1996 was sensationally reunited with the son she had given away 31 years earlier: a well-publicised good news story for New Labour in opposition. That is not mentioned here. This movie puts party politics to one side to concentrate on what Coogan's Sixsmith is shown initially deriding as a "human interest" story: mid-market newspaper slush. Yet he takes it on and they make the oddest of couples. Martin is the high flyer who has risen in the amoral worlds of politics and the media. Philomena is the working-class woman who holds on to one clear moral fact: what the church did to her was wrong, but she doesn't want revenge, only the truth.

The story of Philomena's teenage self - she is played as a young woman by Sophie Kennedy Clark - is gruelling. We are used to Dickensian images of destitute old married couples in the 19th century being separated for ever at the doors of the English workhouses: for men and for women. There's similar agony and lump-in-the-throat desolation in seeing the teenage mums having their babies taken away from them. And all of it sanctified in the name of Mary Magdalene, who received from Christ a compassion that is nowhere visible now.

What Sixsmith and Philomena discover in the US is gripping. Dench shows how Philomena is scared, but has reserves of humour and courage that Sixsmith, for all his sophistication, can't match. There is a touch of Crocodile Dundee in Philomena's wide-eyed presence in the big city, of course, but it is great stuff from Dench.

Coogan's performance is more opaque. To some extent, his Sixsmith can never overtly seek redemption, since he never concedes he did anything wrong. But quite aside from this consideration, Coogan keeps everything pretty low key, even his anger, though there is one Partridgean moment as he savours the fruited bread the nuns give him for tea. Coogan is an excellent actor, but rarely has the chance to show it. With great restraint, he doesn't really give himself the opportunity here, leaving the dramatic and moral focus with Dench. Director Stephen Frears guides this arrangement with a sure hand.

Coogan has spoken publicly of his atheism and Catholic background. But what is really interesting is how his character adopts, and even embraces, the tactics of popular journalism. In pursuit of an interview, his Sixsmith literally shoves his foot in the door. But this kind of "human interest" journalism does real good: it gets at the truth and gives people closure, justifications of which the public has grown suspicious. Could it be that Coogan, the great accuser and challenger of the press, is conducting a creative thought-experiment? Turning the journalists into the good guys? At any rate, the result is a moving and exhilarating film, and the strange chemistry between Dench and Coogan ferments into a 120-degree proof emotional drama.
Topics

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Philomena is something yearned for and lusted after by film-makers and journalists alike - a really good story. It's a powerful and heartfelt drama, based on a real case, with a sledgehammer emotional punch and a stellar performance from Judi Dench, along with an intelligently judged supporting contribution from Steve Coogan.

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Read this Review

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Starring: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Anna Maxwell-Martin

Director: Stephen Frears

Judi Dench is on sparkling form as the titular Irishwoman whose child was snatched away by nuns at a time when giving birth out of wedlock was treated as a criminal act. Decades later, journalist Martin Sixsmith represents her only hope of finding her son (the film is based on his 2009 book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee).

Steve Coogan is suitably irascible as the former BBC correspondent, just publicly fired from his second career as a Labour government adviser, initially turning his nose up at the idea of pursuing a "human interest story". But Philomena, brimming with religious faith and optimism, is such a force of nature that he can't help but be swayed.

Director Stephen Frears exploits the odd-couple dynamic to great effect, not only generating wonderful comic moments but also bringing home the tragedy of Philomena's life. He might have given their journey to America a little more cinematic sweep, but it's no less inspiring for that. You'll laugh and you'll cry, sometimes both at the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DBPqcp6Hc4
Watch coverage of the Oscars 2014 this Sunday from 11:30pm on Sky Movies
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Oscars 2014: Philomena review and trailer - Judi Dench is on sparkling form

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Starring: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Anna Maxwell-Martin Director: Stephen Frears Judi Dench is on sparkling form as the titular Irishwoman whose child was snatched away by nuns at a time when giving birth out of wedlock was treated as a criminal act.

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Watch the trailer

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Philomena Official Trailer #2 (2013) - Judi Dench, Steve Coogan Movie HD

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Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Like us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73 Philomena Official Trailer #2 (2013) - Judi Dench, Steve Coogan Movie HD A woman searches for her adult son, who taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent.