“Noble” is now on DVD

In the early 1950s, Christina Noble (Gloria Cramer Curtis), a young girl from a poor part of Dublin, Ireland, aspires to be a singer when she grows up. She prays and lights candles to Our Lady to care for her sick mother. When she dies, her father, Thomas (Liam Cunningham), an alcoholic, loses custody of the children, and the courts send them to separate institutions.

At 17, Christina finishes school, but more hardships follow when she is raped. Friends bring her to the nuns for care. But Christina is pregnant, and the nuns make her sign a registration form that includes an adoption clause. She is devastated when her son is taken from her.

Christina never stops praying as the years go by. She goes to England in the late ’60s to work, and meets a young man who is setting up a chain of restaurants. They marry and have a child, but the union is fragile. By now it is the early 1970s and the war in Vietnam is raging. She dreams of helping the children there.

It takes Christina (played as an adult by Deirdre O’Kane) until 1989, but eventually she makes it to Vietnam. She looks around and sees homeless children wandering the streets and Westerners there for the sex trade. Christina manages to find funding from oil companies investing in Vietnam, and works the system to set up homes for children.

Watching this small, independent film is like opening a gift and finding something precious inside. It’s inspired by Christina Noble’s extraordinary life, and it is truly one of heroic faith against incredible misfortune. Her steely perseverance in prayer—and her struggle to be an authentic woman in an abusive world while caring for poor children in Ho Chi Minh City—is inspiring and incredible.

I love Christina’s prayer life. She talks to God in a tough manner because she truly believes.

Reposted with permission of St. Anthony Messenger