::: CREDITS :::
Directed by Sean McGuire
Produced by Michael Beattie
Executive Producers Brendan J Byrne

::: TRANSMISSION DETAILS :::
Wednesday 11th October 2006, BBC 1 NI, 10:35 pm


::: SYNOPSIS :::
This is amoving and reflective portrait of a community which gathers for nine days each year around the Solemn Novena in Clonard Monastery. This community is diverse in terms of class, marital status, sexual orientation, and even religion, but gather around a common purpose - to pray for help in crisis and for answers to The Big Questions.

They arrive in their thousands each day from just after 6 in the morning until near to midnight, many of them with moving pleas for help. A selection of these written 'petitions' are read out by the priests, sometimes followed later in the Novena by offers of thanks for prayers answered. Sometimes these petitions are utterly desperate. Recently, a woman who had knocked down and killed a child asked for the prayers and forgiveness of the congregation. Later during the Novena, she killed herself. One young petitioner asked for a pet rabbit.

In addition to painting a portrait of this unusual community, the programme is a snapshot of the democratic, liberal wing of Catholicism, often at odds with the authoritarianism of Rome. The Clonard Novena's message is simple. To quote one opening sermon: 'Welcome, whoever you are. Pull up a chair. It wouldn't be the same without you.'