To mark our anniversary, we have invited 50 Catholics to choose a person from the past 175 years whose life has been a personal inspiration to them and an example of their faith at its best It is often said that Cornelia Connelly’s life has the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster: sex, religion, nuns, bishops, abducted children, a wife threatened with kidnap by her estranged husband, salacious court proceedings… Her life was dramatic and controversial, and still arouses strong feelings, both for and against her. But what really matters about Connelly is not so much what happened to her as what she learned from her experiences and how she grew through them so that she had something worthwhile to offer others. And the most important lesson she learned and shared was how to fin