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Podcast: Cults to Consciousness
Episode: Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary: Separated Children, Married Couples Ordered to Celibacy
Description: From the age of six through her high school years, Patricia Walsh Chadwick was raised in The Center, an isolated, rural community of 100 members, including 39 children, led by Father Leonard Feeney, an excommunicated Jesuit priest, and managed with an iron fist by his spiritual alter ego, Catherine Clarke. Together, they created a monastic environment that demanded obedience, silence, chastity, and detachment from family, achieved by separating parents from their children and forbidding members to read newspapers, watch television, listen to the radio, or communicate with outsiders. Patricia defied Sister Catherine’s mission to mold her into a compliant, submissive nun...