Book Description

Awful Disclosures a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed By Maria Monk Of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal The Book the 'POPE' tried to Ban Maria Monk (June 27, 1816 - summer of 1849) was a Canadian woman whose book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed (1836) claimed to expose systematic sexual abuse of nuns and infanticide of the resulting children by Catholic priests in her convent in Montreal. The book became a best-seller. Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk was published in January 1836. In it, Monk claimed that nuns of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph of the Montreal convent of the Hotel-Dieu, whom she called "the Black Nuns," were forced to have sex with the priests in the seminary next door. The priests supposedly entered the convent through a secret tunnel. If the sexual union produced a baby, it was baptized and then strangled and dumped into a lime pit in the basement. Uncooperative nuns disappeared.