After 20 years in journalism, BBC Political Correspondent Martina Purdy decided it was time for a change of pace and a change of habit. She traded in the high life for the spiritual life and became a nun with the Adoration Sisters on the Falls Road in Belfast.
She shared some of the reasons for her decision with Sean O'Rourke.
"I had a beautiful apartment… I had a job that would be seen by a lot of people as very glamorous and pretty much bought what I wanted when I wanted it and I went on lovely holidays… but I just felt that you know, I needed to give more of myself."
Martina spent several decades at the forefront of political clashes in Northern Ireland and while she appreciates the life she enjoyed, increasingly she was discovering that it was no longer the path for her. A favourite quote of Martina's was Woody Allen's assertion that the third floor of hell is reserved for the media and as Martina jokingly put it, "I didn't want to appear at the pearly gates as a journalist!"
"Towards the end of my career as a journalist, I stopped having the heart for it and I started to pray really for the people that I was reading about and writing about… I just lost some of that hard edge that I suppose I had in pursuit of the truth… It's very necessary but I suppose in telling the truth, people, even those who have done wrong, they get hurt and I suppose I started to feel the pain of that."
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