It was in the Mother House in Paris, a week before she was to fly to Africa, that Keelin began to wonder whether she had made a huge mistake entering the religious life. She was in the large common room with other novices, sitting in front of the big colour TV that had recently been installed and watching a televised event in St Peter’s Square. The commentator spoke with hushed reverence as the cardinals appeared in their scarlet robes and red birettas, followed by the bishops with their mitres, monsignors and priests in their black cassocks, but to Keelin they seemed a self-important flock of peacocks on parade. A thought struck her with stomach-lurching clarity: There is no place for Jesus here. And where are the women? Women as well as men were supposed to be created in God’s likeness. There was no equality in what she was seeing. Or in the life she was living. It was as if a bucket of ice-cold water had been poured over her.

Surrounded by her fellow Sisters, Keelin felt a surge of silent, primal rage as she watched the smug, self-satisfied princes of the Church and their cohorts cheering their leader. Pope Paul VI, austere and cold, had none of the kindly, warm-hearted humility of his predecessor, Pope John XXIII.

Humanae Vitae, On the Regulation of Birth, an encyclical written by the Pope, had reaffirmed the orthodox teaching of the Catholic Church regarding married love, responsible parenthood and the rejection of most forms of artificial contraception. It had caused a lot of controversy on its publication. Imelda had been scathing about it and Keelin, once again, had been impressed with her mother’s progressive stance, particularly at a time when so many women in Ireland accepted what they were told from the pulpit without question.

Keelin’s rage grew as the programme continued and she wondered, were these doubts and observations merely part of the process of assimilation into the life of an obedient nun? Doubts were normal, she and the other novitiates were often told by their Superiors.

But what Keelin was experiencing went beyond the usual doubts voiced by her peers. This felt like an awakening in the very depths of her being, a realization that the suppression of women perpetrated by the Church through the ages, and still to this very moment, was the antithesis of all that Jesus had preached. Now she could understand the attitudes of those American nuns who were demanding equality, despite being frowned upon by their French counterparts for being, as Mother General had put it, ‘too lacking in humility’.