Sister Frances Dominica

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a nun. Her devotion to God is matched only by her devotion to her fellow human beings, because she's also the founder of the world's first hospice for children. She opened its doors twenty one years ago in the grounds of the Oxford Convent in which she lives. There, children with illnesses that mean they won't achieve a full adult life can spend time, often over a period of many years, in a rewarding way.

Presenter0:56

The woman who's created this unique protective environment wasn't much of a success at school, and found her calling on a weekend pilgrimage when she was twenty two. It was all quite sudden, she says. I fell in love with God. Faith, she believes, is caught, not taught, and she got hers from her Scottish grandfather. Of her work with children, she observes simply, The Church must be a pioneer. God is always one step ahead. She is Sister Frances Dominica.

Presenter1:25

Francis God's certainly been one step ahead of you all of the way, hasn't he? Because you didn't have any idea when you were growing up, I think, as a young girl, that you'd be a nun, did you?

Sister Frances Dominica1:34

No, no idea at all. I grew up in the Church of Scotland, if I grew up in any Church, and that was because of the grandfather I adored.

Sister Frances Dominica1:42

who was an elder of the Church of Scotland, and nothing and no one would persuade me to go to Sunday school or children's church or anything like that. I just used to sit beside him like a little leech through the quite long services, understanding nothing, but just, I suppose, caught up in the awesomeness of it all.

Presenter1:55

No.

Presenter1:59

But in terms of your personal ambition, you did not think at all that your life would be in the church or with God. You wanted to be in the church.

Sister Frances Dominica2:05

Oh, no, no. I I wanted to be a nurse from the age of three, yes. All my dolls and bears and everybody were always sick and they never got better or I'd have been out of a job. And so education was marking time until I could do the thing that I really wanted to do.

Presenter2:20

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica2:20

And what about

Presenter2:20

Your personal ambition. How did you see life panning out for yourself, if you anticipated it at all?

Sister Frances Dominica2:26

Well, I hoped that when I had completed my training I would be able to work with one of the agencies abroad. Some of my senior colleagues had gone to Vietnam and were looking after children affected by the war.

Sister Frances Dominica2:38

That was the sort of thing that really fired me. But you thought, I mean, in personal terms, you thought you might get married, actually. Oh, yes, eventually, when I'd done the things I wanted to do, I was going to meet the perfect man and we were going to marry and I was going to have five children and adopt five more. It was all, you know, quite straightforward, really.

Speaker 42:52

Oh, uh

Sister Frances Dominica2:53

And then one of the patients I nursed while I was nursing at the Middlesex Hospital was the vicar of a London church.

Sister Frances Dominica3:00

and I had thought he was the Pope's first cousin, judging by all external appearances, but discovered he was in fact Church of England and for some reason best known to God, certainly not known to me, I started going to the Church regularly.

Presenter3:11

But it's one thing to get involved in the church, it's another thing to decide that you want to become a nun, and that happened very dramatically.

Sister Frances Dominica3:15

That you want to be

Sister Frances Dominica3:17

It happened very dramatically, and I hate God to be dramatic. Yes. There was a a list at the back of the church one week, and I thought, oh, well, in for a penny, in for a pound, so I signed on the dotted line, and this meant a weekend away at the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham.

Presenter3:21

Damn.

Sister Frances Dominica3:33

We were only there two days. On the Sunday we were waiting for a service to begin in the parish church, and I'd got all my life mapped out.

Sister Frances Dominica3:42

And then at two minutes to eleven, just before the service began, with the sun streaming through the windows, in a split second I knew that none of my ideas were for me, that actually what God was asking of me was to be a nun. And there was just from that moment on a conviction that this was what I had to do and that I wouldn't rest until I did it.

Sister Frances Dominica4:06

It's rather lucky.

Presenter4:06

In a sense, isn't it? I mean, just to know in that moment what you're going to do and have that total conviction.

Sister Frances Dominica4:13

Fantastic. And it was the second time in my life because, you know, first of all, I knew I was going to be a nurse.

Sister Frances Dominica4:20

And then knew that I was going to be a nun. The problem was there was no guarantee I would ever nurse again.

Presenter4:25

I'm not sure.

Presenter4:26

Did not

Sister Frances Dominica4:29

Yeah.

Presenter4:29

I want to hear more about how it all happened, but uh tell me about your first record you'd like.

Sister Frances Dominica4:32

On the desert animal.

Presenter4:33

Is that

Sister Frances Dominica4:33

I would like the Sky Boat song, please. This reminds me of my adored grandfather. It also reminds me of my beloved father, who used moderately tunefully to sing to me when I was quite tiny the skyboat song. And the harpist is Eleanor Bennett, who is a very dear friend, whose two sons used to use Helen House before they died.

Presenter5:24

The Skyboat song played by the harpist Eleanor Bennett with Myner Hoylen.

Presenter5:29

Um Francis, you you say you made this grand decision, aged twenty-two, but you just told me that you had

Sister Frances Dominica5:35

Hell having made it. Why? Well, I suppose especially then, it was very hard for people to understand why you would go and, as they saw it, shut yourself away. So this was your family, was it? That's right. Your family were devastated. Although they'd lost you. Yes, absolutely. And it was less painful, they said, not to see me at all than to see me in a habit.

Presenter5:47

That's right, yeah.

Presenter5:51

It lost you.

Presenter5:59

So they didn't

Sister Frances Dominica6:00

So they didn't see me for a long time.

Presenter6:00

Seven.

Presenter6:01

Oh yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica6:03

oh, several years. But uh the community was very good in allowing me to go to s spend a day a month with my grandfather, which was a special concession, and we used to have lovely days together, but I didn't ever see any other members of the family when I saw him.

Presenter6:17

But they were living in the same house.

Sister Frances Dominica6:18

Yes, they were.

Presenter6:19

So how did that work?

Sister Frances Dominica6:20

They would always go out if I was coming.

Presenter6:23

For years.

Sister Frances Dominica6:24

Oh, yes. You didn't see your mother? No. It was too painful for her, and I do understand. She felt that

Sister Frances Dominica6:31

Having been a failure at school, I had then discovered my potential and.

Sister Frances Dominica6:36

Then all of a sudden I was throwing it away.

Sister Frances Dominica6:38

Uh it is hard, I suppose, to see your daughter do something you you just hate. And she would have been proud to have said, you know, my daughter's working with Save the Children Fund and so on.

Presenter6:43

And do

Sister Frances Dominica6:49

It was it was rather different to say I was, as she d once described it, holed up in some godforsaken place an hour's drive from home.

Sister Frances Dominica6:57

Uh

Presenter6:57

Is that what she felt?

Sister Frances Dominica6:57

What's your favorite

Presenter6:59

It was a true test of you though, because you know it meant that you made a huge sacrifice you lost your family when you decided to marry God.

Sister Frances Dominica6:59

Was it?

Sister Frances Dominica7:07

It was very painful knowing the thing

Sister Frances Dominica7:10

That was giving me great joy was giving the people I loved most such tremendous sorrow and distress. But I also knew But if I gave in

Sister Frances Dominica7:21

and came away from the community to which I believe God had called me.

Sister Frances Dominica7:26

In the end, it wouldn't have made them happy, because it it just wouldn't have been right.

Sister Frances Dominica7:32

Make a number two.

Sister Frances Dominica7:34

My mother was very important to me in my life. She was a very strong character, and she and I used to war from time to time, as I've just described. But there was something very, very lovely about her. She was a professional musician. Her career, tragically, was curtailed by the outbreak of the Second World War. She left some compositions when she died, and we actually

Sister Frances Dominica7:57

Found this one and played it at her memorial service. It's a cradle song.

Speaker 48:02

Oh, men from the fields, Soft, softly come through

Speaker 48:17

Every parts round him.

Speaker 48:23

I mind what

Presenter8:33

A cradle song written by My Costaway's mother and sung by Ruth Lambdin accompanied by Marion Creaser.

Presenter8:39

Um, you say, Sister Frances, that you were a failure at school. What what do you mean by that? How big a failure?

Sister Frances Dominica8:45

Well, I never excelled at anything and there were a lot of girls in the school. This was Cheltenham ladies. Yes, it was. And I think to be noticed you you had to excel at something. You had to excel academically or at sport or drama or music or even at being naughty. And my mother was at the school and absolutely loved it and she excelled at music and at being naughty, so she was noticed. And she was a much more gregarious person than I am.

Presenter9:09

What sort of figure would you have cut then? Were you sort of a frightened little rabbit up the corner?

Sister Frances Dominica9:14

No, I would be quiet and yes, not very clever. My school reports always used to say she'd do better if she concentrated more. But having said all of that, I'm really glad, now, looking back, that I experience that sense of failure, because I think it gives you a whole other dimension.

Sister Frances Dominica9:31

to your character and to your understanding of other people. Your mother must have been very disappointed. She was bitterly disappointed. And I remember illicitly reading a letter she wrote to one of my best friends at school saying, Why is Francis such a failure?

Sister Frances Dominica9:45

Oh dear.

Speaker 49:46

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica9:48

It it was quite a um quite an experience. You caused you a lot of hurt to your mother, didn't you?

Sister Frances Dominica9:56

Yes, but in her last years we became the best of friends, and she was my greatest supporter and just wonderful to me.

Presenter10:05

Well, she recognised in the end what you'd achieved, I suppose, which was wonderful. You proved you proved it was all in there.

Sister Frances Dominica10:08

Yeah.

Speaker 410:10

Uh

Presenter10:11

You you trained as a nurse, and it was during that time, I think, that you m met this vicar as a patient who was to bring you into the church. That's right, yes. W were the nuns that he introduced you were they severe? Were they uh you know, the sort of sound of music style nun with the f full wimple and the habit? Oh, yes.

Sister Frances Dominica10:19

Come on.

Sister Frances Dominica10:30

Yes, I mean, they weren't severe in character. They were lovely, gentle people. But they looked sound of music-ish, yes.

Presenter10:37

And that didn't put you off.

Sister Frances Dominica10:37

Okay.

Sister Frances Dominica10:38

Oh, not at all. No, not at all. And indeed, when I started in the community I I looked like that. The funny bit was the day that you received your full habit, um trying to eat a buffet lunch afterwards and open your mouth with all this starch around your face. No, you had to learn to post the food in through the

Sister Frances Dominica10:56

Does that still happen? No, no, no. We we do still have a a habit which we wear oh frequently, but we also wear ordinary clothes. But in those days, yes, you can eat. But in those days it was just so different. You you came not knowing what to expect and prepared to accept anything because you just have this strong conviction.

Presenter11:04

But in those scans it

Sister Frances Dominica11:17

Echo number three.

Sister Frances Dominica11:19

I would like Summertime, please, from Porgy and Bess.

Sister Frances Dominica11:23

No particular reason, except um I remember my father singing it, and uh I love my father very, very dearly, and it's just always been my favourite musical, I think.

Sister Frances Dominica11:34

I have a black adopted son. He's he's actually African, not Caribbean.

Sister Frances Dominica11:38

But there's something of a similarity in the sort of approach to life and the the uh just the colour and the the warmth and the oh, I love it.

Speaker 412:08

And the path in his home.

Speaker 412:16

Oh, you're dead.

Presenter12:20

Summertime, sung by Anne Brown, and that was from the original film soundtrack of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. I want to talk to you, Francis, about your adopted son in a moment, but let's stay with the chronology of your life for now, if we may, and because you were twenty three years old when you signed up, as it were, to be a nun, the Society of All Saints you joined near St. Albans.

Sister Frances Dominica12:32

We know

Presenter12:39

Do you recall?

Presenter12:40

arriving there and how it felt and what it looked like.

Sister Frances Dominica12:43

I do recall the day I arrived to visit. I was dropped off by at the bus stop at the end of the drive, and the drive was very long and poplar lined, and I remember walking up.

Sister Frances Dominica12:54

Approaching this huge building.

Sister Frances Dominica12:57

And just thinking, yes, this is it. I've come home.

Presenter13:01

And when you've uh arrived actually to move in, as it were, not on the visit, uh what did you take with you? What possessions could you take?

Sister Frances Dominica13:09

I had a very small suitcase with underwear, nightwear, toiletries minimal toiletries, I have to say, a Bible.

Sister Frances Dominica13:20

A copy of Thomas Akempis' Imitation of Christ.

Sister Frances Dominica13:27

Uh a pen.

Sister Frances Dominica13:29

That was about it, I think. And your room there, do you call it a room? No, it was a cell. And it had a small window, which was so high that you couldn't see out, and that was deliberate. It had a wrought iron bedstead with a mattress, which had been slept on for a few years, I think, kind of dipped in the middle. It had a high-backed chair. It had a washstand with a bowl and a jug, cold water.

Sister Frances Dominica13:55

And it had a press tool.

Sister Frances Dominica13:57

And that was it. A crucifix.

Sister Frances Dominica14:00

Why?

Presenter14:00

Uh

Sister Frances Dominica14:01

Couldn't you see out of the window? I mean, surely enjoyment of nature is not against the rules. Well, in those days it was thought to be a distraction.

Sister Frances Dominica14:09

Now we wouldn't say that.

Speaker 314:11

Was it a silent order?

Sister Frances Dominica14:14

Not totally silent, but we had long hours of silence during each day.

Sister Frances Dominica14:19

and the greater silence overnight.

Sister Frances Dominica14:22

And what what what were your duties?

Sister Frances Dominica14:24

Oh to begin with, all sorts of things like peeling potatoes, and dusting spotlessly clean choir stalls, and my share of scrubbing floors,

Sister Frances Dominica14:36

All the sorts of things that family and friends just wouldn't begin to understand. But actually, it was the most wonderful gift because it didn't require very much concentration, if you like, as long as you did it properly. But it

Sister Frances Dominica14:52

Offered the opportunity to enter into whole new worlds in relationship with God. And so just door after door opened to me in the silence and through the work.

Presenter15:03

What happened latterly, which we'll come to and the setting up of Helen Hutt, couldn't have happened if you hadn't spent those seven million.

Sister Frances Dominica15:09

No, absolutely not. It was like filling a reservoir, and I've been draining it ever since.

Presenter15:15

I got number four.

Sister Frances Dominica15:16

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica15:17

I would like Miseri by Gregorio Allegri please.

Sister Frances Dominica15:22

God has many, many faces. One face is the suffering God, the God of failure, and perhaps we can come back to that in a moment to whom I cling, I have to say, in so many situations now.

Sister Frances Dominica15:34

The other face of God which really draws me is the awesomeness, the mystery, and this allegri somehow reaches beyond our understanding, beyond our grasp, to the God who is beyond.

Speaker 416:42

They have second one of the boys in the board.

Presenter16:49

Part of Allegri's Miserari, Miserari Mei Deus, sung by the Westminster Cathedral Choir with the soloist Alexander Cemprini, conducted by James O'Donnell.

Presenter16:59

And then lo and behold, Francis, after eleven years, I think, in in that convent, you were elected Mother Superior. Elected Yes, that's right. Ama amazing. I mean, you must have been incredibly flattered.

Sister Frances Dominica17:11

Well, they took a tremendous risk.

Sister Frances Dominica17:13

You mean they have to call you mother? Oh, they ca yes, they did. And in those days, if they were writing a note about something, it would start My Dearest Mother, and it would be signed Your Loving Child, so I would have ninety five year old nuns describing themselves as My Child.

Sister Frances Dominica17:28

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica17:28

The very fact that I was so ill-equipped and so inexperienced for the job meant that everybody had to join in and have a part in it. You democratised the conference, didn't you? Well, it happened fairly fast. It had to.

Presenter17:39

It also, of course, led to the idea of setting up a hospice for children, which is what happened during your tenure as Mother Superior. What made you think of that idea? Where did it come from?

Sister Frances Dominica17:50

It happened through a friendship with a little girl, Helen, and her parents. Helen tragically was taken very ill when she was two and was in hospital for six months.

Sister Frances Dominica18:02

And at the end of the six months, when her parents knew she wasn't going to get well, they took her home and cared for her with tremendous love and devotion.

Sister Frances Dominica18:13

And they were good enough to trust me s so that they lent her to me sometimes, um, just to give them a very short break. It didn't happen very often.

Sister Frances Dominica18:24

But they would say it was knowing that I loved her and would care for her in as much as possible the same way as they cared for her at home, that enabled them to carry on through weeks and months. And it was

Sister Frances Dominica18:34

It was thinking about

Sister Frances Dominica18:36

That?

Sister Frances Dominica18:37

That led me to wonder if there were other desperately sick children and families out there.

Sister Frances Dominica18:44

Experiencing tremendous uh stress and distress without very much support.

Presenter18:51

hospice where children would come i i i in any way to see their days out but but really you're offering a re

Sister Frances Dominica18:58

That's right.

Presenter18:59

It's a home from

Sister Frances Dominica18:59

Yeah.

Presenter19:00

Uh

Sister Frances Dominica19:00

It's a home from home, and families would be welcome to come too. So mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, squads of brothers and sisters, I have to say. Golden Labradors and Tarantulas and Terrapins and all the rest of it have come to stay.

Presenter19:07

Okay, all right.

Presenter19:11

Yeah.

Presenter19:13

I see.

Sister Frances Dominica19:14

It's just a a break off.

Presenter19:15

But

Sister Frances Dominica19:16

Holiday, change, good as rest, all those things.

Presenter19:17

Yes, we tried to do that.

Presenter19:19

But if

Sister Frances Dominica19:25

And neither can you take a good night's sleep for granted. Uh I remember one of the very first little girls who came to stay her mother hadn't had an unbroken night's sleep in thirteen years.

Sister Frances Dominica19:35

So you said

Presenter19:35

Up Helen House twenty-one years ago, in the grounds of the convent in Oxford. That's right. And how many families

Sister Frances Dominica19:42

Have you had through there since? Oh, hundreds. I've lost count. But we have it's small, and it's deliberately small, because I think you can be like family, or or you you can welcome people as you would welcome your friends. Sometimes families bring their children, oh, sixty, eighty, a hundred and ten times to stay for respite care.

Sister Frances Dominica19:59

During the course of the illness, and yes, some of the children do die in Helen House.

Sister Frances Dominica20:05

Let's pause there and have your next record.

Sister Frances Dominica20:09

I would like walking in the air from the snowman please and this is particularly because I remember one little boy who came on a number of visits from the north of England because people used to travel a long way when we were the only children's hospice and he was passionate about this song and we had it playing again and again and again and when very sadly he died we had it as he at his funeral.

Sister Frances Dominica20:31

And it sort of became the theme song for Helen House for a number of years.

Speaker 420:37

We're walking in the air We're floating in the moonlit sky

Speaker 420:50

No people far below are sleeping as we flow.

Speaker 420:59

I'm holding very tight I'm riding in the beach

Presenter21:07

Walking in the Air from The Snowman by Howard Blake and that was sung by Peter Orty.

Presenter21:12

Francis, the death of a child is well, it's just unthinkable really, and there is always that feeling that it it shouldn't be. How can you make it any easier to bear?

Sister Frances Dominica21:23

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica21:24

Well, I find twenty-one years on I've got fewer answers to the big questions than I had at the outset.

Speaker 421:30

Hmm.

Sister Frances Dominica21:30

And every time another child comes with what we know is going to be a fatal illness, and you perhaps see a little toddler who should be just exploring and discovering all the wonderful things in life, instead of which he may be listless and very sick and you just think, why? And the parents ask you why, because they expect you to have some kind of explanation. Well, it isn't often the parents, it's quite often people a little bit further removed from the centre of the the parents are are in the unknowing, if you like, and I think we let them down if we try to explain, because there isn't an explanation.

Sister Frances Dominica22:10

There's a word I discovered a few years back, uh companion.

Sister Frances Dominica22:15

Kumpanis to share bread, and bread is symbolic, isn't it, of what we need for survival and for nourishment. But it's a very ordinary everyday thing.

Sister Frances Dominica22:23

To me,

Sister Frances Dominica22:24

What I can best offer is companionship, the ordinary everyday, coming alongside, sharing, you know, the joys and the sorrows. And I have to say at this point that it isn't all tears. I think if you become, through the experience you're living with, you live through the immensity of grief and of sorrow, you somehow become capable of experiencing the same amount of joy and of wonder. And we see that again and again. And the other thing I think to a certain extent you catch from the families is the ability to see time in terms of depth rather than length. It's not about dying, it's about living fully until you die. And when they do die.

Presenter23:02

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica23:03

How do you handle?

Presenter23:03

then,'cause that's the moment when they must feel

Presenter23:06

Well, everything's gone. They've lost control, haven't they?

Sister Frances Dominica23:08

Control, haven't they?

Sister Frances Dominica23:10

Yes, that's right. And we would try to show them how.

Sister Frances Dominica23:16

They can take back a little bit of control, actually, because at the last there are so many things that they can do. Like what?

Sister Frances Dominica23:23

Well, there's no hurry. But when they're ready, perhaps they would like to wash their child and dress them in the clothes they've chosen. And then we have a little room in Helen House, which is like a bedroom, which they can arrange as they like, uh with furniture and toys and candles and pictures, whatever they want to bring into the little room. Yes, after they've died, and it can be kept cool enough so that the child's body can remain there until the funeral.

Speaker 423:41

So they want to bring into the child's body.

Sister Frances Dominica23:49

Do they want to do that? They want to lay out. Absolutely. They really mostly do want to do that.

Presenter23:49

If they want

Presenter23:51

Oh, absolutely.

Sister Frances Dominica23:57

They want the opportunity, once they're offered it, to be in and out of that little room over the next days, gradually saying their goodbyes and they must time and again have turned to you and said, Why would God do this to us? Yes, but

Sister Frances Dominica24:10

I think almost always. There is also a sense in which uh

Sister Frances Dominica24:16

Life has somehow emerged.

Sister Frances Dominica24:18

This isn't an end. It can't be an end.

Sister Frances Dominica24:22

But there is the pain of separation.

Sister Frances Dominica24:26

Record number six.

Sister Frances Dominica24:28

I would like this particularly for all those countless people who have experienced the tragedy, and it is an unspeakable tragedy, of the death of a beloved child. The Lord bless you and keep you. By John Rutter.

Speaker 424:49

God make his face to shine upon me.

Speaker 424:55

Sorry about it.

Speaker 425:01

Vigoration

Speaker 425:11

Uh

Speaker 425:28

Be great.

Presenter25:42

The Lord bless you and keep you from John Rutter's Requiem sung by Polyphony with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta conducted by Stephen Leighton.

Presenter25:50

We said earlier, um, Sister Frances, that before you thought of becoming a nun, you'd thought that you might get married and have children and adopt others. And in fact, of course, as you've mentioned, you have done the latter, haven't you? You have adopted a son. Yes. How and when did that

Sister Frances Dominica26:03

Done.

Sister Frances Dominica26:05

It happened.

Sister Frances Dominica26:06

I was helping with a clergy conference in Ghana in 1988.

Sister Frances Dominica26:11

And one Sunday I visited the hospital, and among many other people met a very tiny, very frail little boy. How old was he?

Speaker 426:18

How old was he?

Sister Frances Dominica26:20

He was ten and a half months, weighed just under nine pounds and very poorly. It was a year of terrible drought in Ghana.

Sister Frances Dominica26:27

A lot of people were suffering.

Sister Frances Dominica26:30

The extreme malnutrition.

Presenter26:32

And did you say there and then I want to adopt?

Sister Frances Dominica26:35

Well, no, it wasn't quite like that. I I talked with the doctor who didn't hold up very much hope for him.

Sister Frances Dominica26:43

And so I said in one of those moments of madness, um may I take him and care for him?

Sister Frances Dominica26:49

And he's now sixteen and five foot eleven and

Presenter26:52

So you brought him home with you to the sisters?

Sister Frances Dominica26:55

Hmm. Yeah.

Presenter26:56

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica26:56

No, not quite like that. They couldn't have his papers ready in time, so the doctor cabled me a couple of weeks later, but in the meantime, I'd had to explain to the sisters and I told them everything I could think of about this wonderful trip to West Africa. I'd never been in Africa before. And then I thought, well, here goes. I have to actually confess. And so I said, there's just one thing, we're expecting a baby. And he followed, oh, two and a half weeks later. How did he do that? I met him at Heathrow. All by himself in a little. Well, he came escorted by the airport chaplain and somebody else who was travelling back to Europe from Ghana and handed over very little. A nappy and a T-shirt, I think. And, oh, we've just loved each other from that day on.

Presenter26:56

So

Presenter27:06

And I told them.

Presenter27:23

How did he mention it?

Presenter27:25

Well

Presenter27:35

No possession.

Presenter27:45

And ha have you been back to I mean the family?

Sister Frances Dominica27:47

Yes, we've met his family.

Presenter27:51

And how is that? Are they they pleased that he's here?

Sister Frances Dominica27:54

Yes, very proud of him.

Presenter27:55

And and he's he's now sixteen. Yes. And and do you live together as mother and son? Yes, we.

Sister Frances Dominica28:02

We do.

Presenter28:02

Wait, how does that work?

Sister Frances Dominica28:03

Well, the community owns a house just across the road from the convent, just an ordinary house in the road, and so that's been our home since he was three. And uh it's all right to bring girlfriends home and uh to have your friends home and play loud music and so on, which might be more difficult in the convent itself.

Presenter28:20

But what about if you appear in your habit?

Sister Frances Dominica28:23

Ah, well, I'm fairly discreet about that.

Presenter28:25

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica28:25

Yes, I am. I try not to embarrass him. I'm sure you don't embarrass him. But I suppose it's difficult to say. And he friends are bound to ask.

Presenter28:30

But I suppose it's difficult. In a sense, you're bound to ask, aren't they? Absolutely.

Sister Frances Dominica28:35

Set up, which is unusual to say the least. Well, it is, but uh we try to be as normal as we can.

Sister Frances Dominica28:40

He's passionate about motor cross racing and so we trundle off with motor bikes and end up in muddy fields or incredibly dusty fields. There's nothing in between, you know, and and spend uh days at weekends doing that. He races and I stand in the middle of the field with my eyes shut absolutely terrified.

Presenter28:57

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica28:58

Yeah.

Presenter28:58

I mean, it is an incredible story for a a a nun to have a son, as it were. I I mean in that sense, and I said it at the beginning, I mean, you have had your case.

Sister Frances Dominica29:02

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica29:04

And you

Sister Frances Dominica29:06

Take an evening, haven't you? Oh yes. I've been incredibly blessed and and I reflect to myself sometimes, you know, I I'm just so glad to be me. I just feel I've been so blessed.

Sister Frances Dominica29:17

Neckout number seven.

Sister Frances Dominica29:19

I would like the Sanctus from Benjamin Britton's War Requiem, please. I I love it.

Sister Frances Dominica29:26

In this piece of music you can hear the angels' wings and all the wonderful splendour of heaven as they sing Holy, Holy, Holy.

Speaker 429:39

It's a situation.

Presenter30:33

Part of the Sanctus from Benjamin Britton's War Requiem with Elizabeth Serderstrom and the boys of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, all conducted by Simon Rattle.

Presenter30:44

And now, Frances, you're opening Douglas House, also in uh the grounds of the convent in Oxford. What's the difference between it and Helen House?

Presenter30:54

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica30:54

Many young people with progressive life-emitting illnesses are living longer than they might once have done. So we were discovering that we had quote children unquote returning for respite care visits to Helen House who were now in their twenties. And so we decided we'd better roll up our sleeves and start again.

Sister Frances Dominica31:15

And we've built Douglas House just across the garden for people between eighteen and fourteen.

Presenter31:18

And G f

Presenter31:19

And obviously there's no doubt in your mind that there's a huge need for these places. And twenty one years ago you established Helen House and now there are twenty seven such places across the land and more indeed. You tell me you get more and more referrals every day from the John Radcliffe Hospital.

Sister Frances Dominica31:19

And

Sister Frances Dominica31:34

That's

Presenter31:34

That's right, yes.

Sister Frances Dominica31:35

But no state money in there. We haven't had a penny in twenty-one years. Certainly it would be very nice to have some statutory funding, as long as we can still run Helen House and Douglas House in the way that the families want, because they're the experts, they know what they need and they know how it should be done. And so from start to finish, we must listen to them. Well you can plan

Presenter31:57

In your campaign on your desert island, um I I presume it's going to be no hardship for someone who's learned to live in the past as as frugally and contemplatively

Sister Frances Dominica32:08

as you have. Well, I'm hoping that there will be lots of lovely fruit and possibly vegetables because I don't think I can kill anything to eat, so I might be hungry if there isn't.

Sister Frances Dominica32:19

Yes, I don't know how well I'll survive. I I

Sister Frances Dominica32:22

I do love solitude, I have to say.

Sister Frances Dominica32:26

Fast record.

Sister Frances Dominica32:27

I would like the theme from the film Schindler's List, please.

Sister Frances Dominica32:32

Because it speaks of the wonder of what.

Sister Frances Dominica32:37

One person can do in the midst of the horror of hatred and cruelty.

Presenter33:13

Theme from the film Schindler's List, composed and conducted by John Williams, with Yitzhak Perlman playing the violin there. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Francis, which one would you take?

Sister Frances Dominica33:24

Yeah.

Presenter33:25

To your island.

Presenter33:26

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica33:26

Oh, I would have tremendous difficulty.

Sister Frances Dominica33:30

Perhaps a skyboat song?

Sister Frances Dominica33:32

Memories of your grandfather. Yes. And your father.

Presenter33:34

Yeah.

Sister Frances Dominica33:35

And Eleanor and her lovely boys.

Sister Frances Dominica33:39

And what about your book? We give you the Bible, and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. May I take that amazing book?

Sister Frances Dominica33:46

Of Photographs The Earth from the Air by Jan artist Bertrand Plies.

Presenter33:52

Tell me about it.

Sister Frances Dominica33:53

I don't think there's any book that I've yet read which I could read again and again, always supposing I'm going to live on this island for years.

Sister Frances Dominica34:00

But to look at fabulous photographs from all over the world, I think I could do again and again and again. And what about your luxury? I don't know whether you need a luxury. You're not someone who has luxuries, are you? Oh, please do. Do you think I could have a really comfortable chaise longue?

Presenter34:11

Well

Presenter34:12

Do you

Sister Frances Dominica34:17

Could I possibly have a mosquito net attached?

Sister Frances Dominica34:21

Why not?

Presenter34:21

Sister Francis Dominica, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 334:33

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.