UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
By Kevin Cullen / Globe Staff / February 24, 2014
For an 80-year-old, Philomena Lee gets around.
Last month, she spoke at the Golden Globes before a television audience of millions. A few weeks ago, she met the pope in Rome. He was very nice, she said. And that was after she met in Washington with a bunch of politicians, including US Representative Joe Kennedy.
On Sunday night, Philomena Lee will be sitting in the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood with her BFF, Dame Judi Dench, who plays her in the film named after her. Dench is up for an Oscar as best actress.
Philomena Lee is thrilled that the film based on her life has done so well and garnered so much attention, mainly because it has given her a platform to advocate for something close to her heart: opening records so adopted children can learn about their biological parents.
For those who haven’t seen the movie: When Philomena was a teenager, she got pregnant by a young man who wasn’t her husband, which in the Ireland of her youth was considered so scandalous that her family disowned her. She was delivered to a convent, where the nuns delivered her baby boy and treated her as a sinner, forcing her to work. When her son Anthony was 3, the nuns gave him away to an American family behind Philomena’s back. Then they sent her back to work in the laundry and told her nothing.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.