text: I think an important aspect to note about this time period (and this movie) is that the nuns involved did not WANT to be nuns, and even more importantly, they did not have the calling to be a nun. The director has said multiple times that he learned through his studies and conversations with Italian clergy that in the time during which the movie takes place, women were sent to the convent because they were the youngest and didn't have enough money left for a dowry, their fathers wanted good favor with the church, their parents didn't approve of whom they wanted to marry...these women were angry and upset and bored being in the convent. This movie is meant to be an adaptation of the stories about THESE people, not all Catholics during that time or present-day. He did not make it to discredit or blaspheme the Catholic Church, but to show people today how people back then struggled similarly to how people today struggle. Catholicism is just the setting, not the point.