Mary Ward (book)

"[3] However, she quickly realizes that she isn't well-suited to life at the convent, as her days become dull and fatiguing with little time for real spiritual contemplation.

With their encouragement, Mary decides to take her friends with her back to St. Omer and, using their help, starts a Catholic girls' school.

To try and acquire the sanction of the Holy See, which would grant her institution legitimacy, Mary decides to go to Rome and request an audience with Pope Urban VIII.

Mary receives a Papal audience, but her requests go nowhere and eventually, she opens a school there, so that the Church can examine her work and thus verify that it is legitimate.

Mary, along with a few other companions, then journeys across Europe to, among other places, Naples, Perugia, Munich, Vienna, and Prague, establishing schools as she goes.

Eventually, Mary receives an opportunity to write to the Pope and, acknowledging her fault and asking pardon for her offenses, requests to be set free.

Section four chronicles Mary's final journey to Rome, return to England, and death after the beginning of the English Civil War.

In Rome, she establishes a house for English refugees of the civil war and stays for some time in their company, but as her health continues to get worse and Mary realizes that she is dying, she decides that she wants to be buried in England.

"[5] Helen White writes in the Catholic Historical Review that "perhaps the finest thing about Miss Coudenhove's study is her presentation of her heroine's spirit.

Miss Coudenhove reveals descriptive gifts of a very high order in the brilliant series of scenes through which she follows Mary Ward.