‘He seemed like a very kind, good man to me’

Sitting in the foyer of Rome's Hotel Eden for an interview with NBC and Al Jazeera, Philomena Lee (80) looks for all the world like an ageing star of stage and screen who is more than capable of handling media pressures.

On the day after her brief encounter with Pope Francis during his weekly public audience in the Vatican, Philomena yesterday met the press as part of the campaign to promote "The Philomena Project", an Ireland-based lobby calling for the Government to enact legislation to "open up" adoption records and reunite mothers separated from their children.

Meeting the pope
Ms Lee, the woman whose painful story is told in the Oscar-nominated film Philomena, starring Judi Dench, laughs at the idea of being any sort of celebrity. "I am no star, I can tell you that . . . but it has been fantastic [in Rome]. I never in my whole life thought that I would ever, ever get to meet the Pope, me an ordinary Irish woman. He seemed like a very kind, good man to me."

Earlier in a press conference, Ms Lee had described her feelings during Wednesday's short chat with the pope, when she had been presented to Francis by Steve Coogan, the screenwriter and producer of Philomena.

“It was such a contrast with how I was made to feel 62 years ago. It was such an awful sin then to have a baby out of wedlock but he [Pope Francis] made me feel so good inside. I’ve carried this guilt for more than 60 years so there was a huge sense of relief,” said Ms Lee, who lives in the US.

Her son, Anthony, was born in 1952 in a mother-and-baby home in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, and given up for adoption to the US three years later. He died in 1995, while he and his mother were simultaneously trying to find one another, before they could be reunited.

Grudge not harboured
"I have forgiven people for what happened. I would say though that my religion slackened off a bit but I hold it against no one, not now anyway. What was I to do, spend the last 62 years with a grudge?" Ms Lee said.

The Philomena Project was founded by Ms Lee, her daughter Jane Libberton and the Adoption Rights Alliance.

Speaking on behalf of ARA, Susan Lohan suggested that “all Irish society” must share the “guilt” for the pain and loss which thousands of young Irish women like Ms Lee had experienced.

Ms Lohan said she hoped the success of the Oscar-nominated film telling Ms Lee’s story would act as “a lightning rod” that would give a major boost to the Adoption Rights Alliance’s campaign to force the Government to release information on illicit adoptions and to assist mothers and children to find one another.

Film as catalyst
She said the film had already had a "huge" effect, prompting women to come forward and tell their painful stories. She also said it was a matter of some urgency, given the age of many of the women, that the Government addresses the issue quickly.

The Philomena Project group confirmed that Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, head of the Vatican’s Academy of the Sciences, and Msgr Guillermo Karcher, the pope’s Argentine private secretary, had seen the film on Wednesday. Afterwards, Bishop Sánchez distanced himself from the film’s US critics, saying it was an important story and not based on anti-church sentiment.