Pray for Our Sinners: Powerful account of resistance to ‘empire designated to punishing girls’

Sinéad O’Shea, director of A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot, confirms her determination to disinter unwelcome truths with this return to her hometown of Navan, in Co Meath. Nobody upright and awake will be unaware of how a near-theocracy once ruined ordinary Irish lives, but there are still grim surprises to be had in her gently unfolding narrative.

O’Shea works in archive footage to show the processes by which an “empire designated to punishing girls” asserted its power. A recurring theme, both implicit and explicit, concerns the willing acquiescence of so many ordinary citizens. Corporal punishment was accepted casually. Few expressed surprise when pregnant girls were sent to “mother and baby” homes. This is, however, a tale of resistance.

The heroes of the piece are, unquestionably, Dr Mary Randles and her late husband, Patrick, also a doctor. In one of those true stories that might cause a writer of satirical fiction to pause, a young man was brought to the surgery seeking a note asking that he be beaten only on the arm the priests had not yet broken. Dr Paddy Randles wasn’t having it. He took his complaints to the school and, after being greeted with stony reproach, moved on to the media.

The reports of priests barricading the bridges and flinging newspapers into the river also seem to spring from an overheated work of satire. The Randles continued to resist. They helped pregnant girls escape the grasp of the Catholic Church. They offered a kind ear to those shut out from compassion elsewhere. Still sharp and witty, Mary Randles presents a clear-eyed picture of an apparently mad world. All this comfortably within living memory.

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Podcast: Director Sinéad O’Shea and Dr Mary Randles talk about the film

Listen | 42:26

On the other side of the combat was the apparently charismatic Fr Andy Farrell. Only those who were there can attest to the fairness of the film’s portrait, but O’Shea does invite Navan folk still well disposed to air their views. They speak warmly of the late priest’s dedication to the credit union. It would be wrong to suggest the film ends with anything like a twist – scarcely even a revelation – but the closing minutes cunningly remind us that we all contain multitudes.

Pray for Our Sinners (clever title, incidentally) is not a shocker on the scale of clerical-abuse documentaries such as Mea Maxima Culpa or Deliver Us from Evil. It is a smaller story that connects directly with a tight community. Its power lies in its intimacy and, ultimately, in its cautious hopefulness. Things have changed.