Philomena Lee: “i Felt Liberated from My Shame after Meeting the Pope”
By Iacopo Scaramuzzi
In a statement given after Wednesday’s General Audience in the Vatican, she said she felt “honoured” and “delighted” to have met Pope Francis. She said she no longer felt bitterness towards the Catholic Church: “After such a long time — Anthony would be 62 this year — so how could I go through a whole of life holding a grudge?” But she confessed that at the start of her ordeal she did feel hurt, sad and angry and added that yesterday’s brief encounter finally liberated her from an entire life of shame. Philomena Lee is an elderly Irish lady. Back in 1952, when she was still just a teenager, she got pregnant out of wedlock. She was sent to a convent as many other teenage mothers were at the time and when her son was born she was forced to give him up. The child was sent to the United States, where Philomena went to search for him 50 years later, accompanied by journalist Martin Sixsmith. Now her story has been made into a film directed by Stephen Frears. “Philomena” has been a box office smash hit and was nominated for an Oscar. The real Philomena told her story and spoke about her meeting with Pope Francis at a press conference held at Hotel Eden in Rome yesterday morning. “It was a great honour to meet the Pope; he is a special person; he moved me,” Philomena Lee said. Answering journalists’ questions about the film, accompanied by Steve Coogan, the star, co-writer and producer of “Philomena”, Lee said her meeting with the Pope was “very brief”. “The Pope welcomed us and listed to us carefully,” she said. What did you feel when you met the Pope? “You were made to feel so bad about having a baby out of wedlock. I've carried the guilt inside for 50 years, without telling anybody. The only person who knew about it was my brother. When I met the Pope yesterday I finally felt liberated, I no longer had to feel guilty. I hope and I believe that Pope Francis will stand beside me in my fight to help thousands of mothers and children shed light on the truth regarding their own stories.” Is the film “Philomena” a faithful interpretation of your own story? “Yes, the film is a very faithful reproduction of my story as I recounted it to the journalist Martin Sixsmith and then to director Stephen Frears. Of course the film does some artistic licence; for example I didn’t travel to the United States with the journalist. But the crux of the story is my story.” Did you meet other women who had been teenage mothers like you and forced to give up their children? “No because once we were in the convent we had to change our names. For three years my name was Marcela. And all other girls I met at the time who were in my situation had names that were different to their own. So when I was asked years later whether I knew such and such, I replied that I didn’t because we knew each other by different names. We also felt guilty for having been teenage mothers so we didn’t speak to each other much. I only shared my experience with one girl but we lost touch.” Do you hold the Vatican responsible for what happened to you as a young girl? “I was very young at the time; I never asked myself these kinds of questions. I don’t know who was responsible or to what extent. Things just turned out as they turned out. It happened a long time ago. Of course, when I came out I was initially disappointed, angry, hurt and sad; I was angry wit everyone. I even lost touch with the faith a bit. But I could not have lived with this bitterness for 62 years. I also worked as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital for a while and after coming into contact with the pain of so many others, a pain that was even worse than my own, I sort of put my suffering aside a bit. I do not feel resentful, at least not any more.” The press conference was promoted by the Philomena Project, an association which based on the Philomena Lee case, is asking the Irish government to open its archives to unveil the stories of mothers who were forced to give their children up for adoption in Irish Catholic institutes. There are claimed to be at least 60 thousand of these women, many of whom were expatriated and their stories remain untold. Aside from Philomena herself, a number of others spoke at yesterday’s press conference moderated by Giorgio Gosetti (director of Venice Days, an event held on the fringes of the Venice Film Festival where “Philomena” was presented): Philomena Lee’s second-born, Jane Libberton, who co-founded the Philomena Project with her mother, Susan Lohan of the Adoption Rights Alliance and actor Steve Coogan. Coogan said that after the General Audience on Wednesday, the group watched the film in the Vatican, along with Mgr. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and Mgr. Guillermo Javier Karcher, one of Pope Francis’ secretaries. The two Argentinean prelates “were moved by the film and laughed during the funny moments.” “In the interview held after the film, they emphasised how much they appreciated the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation in the film. In the past the Church treated some young women very badly, but now Francis is Pope things seem to have changed. Errors of the past have been recognised, they are not hidden under the carpet, replacing a mentality of oppression with dialogue, so that criticisms are not seen as attacks. I am not Catholic myself but I really appreciated the courage and humility the Church and the Vatican showed in receiving us,” the actor said. When asked whether it was just a coincidence that the Pope’s meeting with Philomena Lee took place on the same day the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child published its report on the Vatican’s handling of the paedophilia scandal, Susan Lohan said it was “pure coincidence.”
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