Against the odds, Mary Ward founded two religious orders in an age when being a Catholic in England was highly dangerous and being a woman leader was anathema to the Church. Now her original convent has a plan to tell her story more effectively If Mary Ward’s life had been made into a film, it might begin with a little girl hurrying over snow. Dressed in the simple but well-made homespun of the Elizabethan gentry, she falls. We cut to the drumming of hooves – the secret police searching for hiding Catholics? Over the hooves, perhaps, we hear the screams of men stretched on a rack, a woman being crushed under stone, likely punishments for those caught contravening anti-Catholic laws. Fortunately, the child is not hurt, and when she gets up she stares over her shoulder as thou