Born in the 1930s, a time when unmarried pregnant women were whisked off in secrecy and their babies given away, Mimi Bull grew up believing she’d been adopted by two women, a mother and daughter. Not until she was a mother herself did she learn that those adoptive parents were her blood relatives—her grandmother and her mother.

It would be another dozen-plus years before she discovered the identity of her father: the Catholic priest she’d known as a close family friend. The stories she’d been told in childhood had been concocted to hide her biological father’s broken vow of celibacy and shield her mother from the disgrace of unwed pregnancy.

In this moving memoir, Bull writes lovingly of her parents and of their extraordinary efforts to forge a life as a family while keeping these enormous secrets. Yet she also reveals the toll that secrecy took on her—evidenced in large part by her lifelong struggle with depression and a yearning to understand who she was and where she belonged.Even after learning the truth of her parentage, Bull spent years trying to find someone outside her family who would believe her story and offer support.

Celibacy—A Love Story is a tender but honest portrayal of the complicated and painful aftereffects of secrecy. It’s also a call for action from the Roman Catholic Church. Bull ends her memoir with a candid letter to Pope Francis, stating, “Just as the secrecy deprived me of feeling a part of either my mother or father’s family...so the secrecy and shame has kept priests’ children from the comfort and support of knowing one another.... The Church...swept us all under the rug to save its reputation. It never considered the human fallout from its failure to acknowledge us, the blameless children, much less offer compassion for our plight.”