A true story stranger than fiction: When an Irish Catholic nun, fearful she was about to be murdered by her mother superior, fled her convent in Wagga Wagga and sought the protection of the Orange lodge, she sparked a sectarian war that divided the Australian nation. Arrested as a lunatic at the request of her bishop she was declared sane by the Lunacy Court and released. She then sued the bishop for damages in the Supreme Court in a case that lasted two weeks and attracted the attention of the press across Australia and around the world. In parliament, demands by opposition members for an inquiry into Catholic convents led to threats of violence between Catholic and Protestant MPs. When the nun’s brother kidnapped her off a suburban Sydney street, intending to take her back to her family in Ireland, the police intervened. But when the brother was allowed to leave the country without charge, the opposition moved a censure motion that threatened to bring down the Labor government.