The intellectual independence of a reform-minded English Catholic writer a century or so ago incensed the Catholic hierarchy of the time so much that she was denied the sacraments in one diocese; yet like many women ostracised in the past, her work may at last be bearing fruit

The intellectual independence of a reform-minded English Catholic writer a century or so ago incensed the Catholic hierarchy of the time so much that she was denied the sacraments in one diocese; yet like many women ostracised in the past, her work may at last be bearing fruit

When she was asked by puzzled friends where her young niece was, Lady Lindsay would tell them: “Maude has gone to Rome to study for the priesthood.”

Maude Dominica Petre was born on 4 August 1863 into an old aristocratic English Catholic family whose members were used to fighting for what they believed in. This heritage and a private education combined to create a fiercely independent mind. She lost both her parents before she was 20.

From a young age, she had unnerved priests with her critical approach to faith; as a remedy for her doubts, her confessor advised her to go to Rome to study scholastic theology. The works of St Thomas Aquinas, he believed, would render her faith unassailable. Aged 22, she travelled to Rome, where she studied under professors from the College of Propaganda. As far as Maude knew, she was the only woman studying theology in Rome at that time. She herself admitted: “It was a fairly crazy idea.” But this strong dose of theology seems to have worked wonders, at least temporarily. In 1890, she joined the London novitiate of the Filles de Marie, later becoming the superior of the order’s English and Irish provinces.

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