Qualla: Sean Ross Abbey https://qualla.com/sean-ross-abbey en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/m/sean-ross-abbey-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Sean Ross Abbey https://qualla.com/sean-ross-abbey Sean Ross Abbey: Introduction https://qualla.com/sean-ross-abbey/ Photo credit AugusteBlanqui, CC BY-SA 4.0. Philomena Lee arrived at Sean Ross Abbey in 1952. She was eighteen years old, unmarried, and pregnant. The Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary took her in, delivered her baby—a boy she named Anthony—and three years later, without her consent, arranged his adoption by an American couple. He became Michael A. Hess, eventually chief counsel for the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., and he died in 1995 still trying to find the woman who had given birth to him. His story, and his mother's, became Martin Sixsmith's 2009 book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee and Stephen Frears' 2013 film Philomena. The Abbey in the film is this Abbey. The graves Philomena could not stop walking past are real.

Read more: Sean Ross Abbey on Qualla

Image: AugusteBlanqui | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/m/sean-ross-abbey-wp/gc6m-sean-ross-abbey-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Sean Ross Abbey: The Wood Beyond Reach https://qualla.com/sean-ross-abbey/ Photo credit AugusteBlanqui, CC BY-SA 4.0. The site has been holy ground for fifteen centuries. Crónán of Roscrea founded a monastery here in the sixth century, but the location was 'a wooded morass far from the haunts of men'—so wild that pilgrims got lost trying to reach it. Crónán abandoned it and moved to the more acc...

Read more: Sean Ross Abbey on Qualla

Image: AugusteBlanqui | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/m/sean-ross-abbey-wp/gc6m-sean-ross-abbey-the-wood-beyond-reach.mp3 0:06 2 full Sean Ross Abbey: What Happened Here https://qualla.com/sean-ross-abbey/ Photo credit AugusteBlanqui, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between 1932 and 1969, Sean Ross Abbey operated as a Mother and Baby Home. Unmarried pregnant women, sent away by their families and a society that treated their pregnancies as moral failure, came here to give birth in secrecy. Their babies were sometimes adopted—often to wealthy...

Read more: Sean Ross Abbey on Qualla

Image: AugusteBlanqui | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/m/sean-ross-abbey-wp/gc6m-sean-ross-abbey-what-happened-here.mp3 0:06 3 full Sean Ross Abbey: How They Died https://qualla.com/sean-ross-abbey/ Photo credit AugusteBlanqui, CC BY-SA 4.0. The death certificates make difficult reading. 128 children are recorded as dying from 'Marasmus'—severe malnutrition. Others were recorded as dying of convulsions, exhaustion. Two babies died from sun and heat stroke. One child died from acute heart failure as the result of chok...

Read more: Sean Ross Abbey on Qualla

Image: AugusteBlanqui | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/m/sean-ross-abbey-wp/gc6m-sean-ross-abbey-how-they-died.mp3 0:06 4 full Sean Ross Abbey: What Remains, What Returned https://qualla.com/sean-ross-abbey/ Photo credit AugusteBlanqui, CC BY-SA 4.0. St Anne's Special School opened on the campus in February 1971, providing specialist services to students aged four to eighteen with severe or profound general learning disabilities, or with autism. The Sisters continue to run it. In February 2018, the congregation put much of th...

Read more: Sean Ross Abbey on Qualla

Image: AugusteBlanqui | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/m/sean-ross-abbey-wp/gc6m-sean-ross-abbey-what-remains-what-returned.mp3 0:06 5 full Sean Ross Abbey: Philomena, and Everyone Else https://qualla.com/sean-ross-abbey/ Photo credit AugusteBlanqui, CC BY-SA 4.0. Philomena Lee was reunited with her son's story in 2009, half a century after her son had been taken from her, and only after his death. Their case sparked the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, which reported in 2021 and led to a state apology from Taoiseach Mich...

Read more: Sean Ross Abbey on Qualla

Image: AugusteBlanqui | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/m/sean-ross-abbey-wp/gc6m-sean-ross-abbey-philomena-and-everyone-else.mp3 0:06 6 full